A Pocket Chinese-Russian-English Dictionary: Arranged by the Rosenberg Graphical System (review)

This volume, edited by John S. Barlow, is conceived as a "smaller companion volume" (p. viii) to his Chinese-Russian-English Dictionary Arranged by the Rosenberg Graphical System (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995). The pocket edition also serves as a reprint of the 2,273-character, 8,500-word Pocket Chinese-Russian Dictionary by N. S. Araushkin and B. Ja. Nadtochenko (Moscow: Russkij Jazyk, 1975), to which a parallel English text has been added.

The English text is derived from the Chinese text and is quite independent of the Russian text, as stated in the Preface (p. viii). English translations are primarily based on the recently published ABC Chinese-English Dictionary, edited by John DeFrancis (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1996), and A Chinese-English Dictionary, Revised Edition, edited by Wēi Dōngyà (Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press, 1995).

Like its larger predecessor, this dictionary is arranged according to the Rosenberg Graphical System. This system is based on twenty-two basic graphical elements and named after the Russian Buddhologist who perfected it in 1916. Rosenberg's system allows the reader to locate an unknown character in the dictionary by analyzing it into basic components according to a fixed set of rules. As such, it presents an effective parallel to the alphabetical listing of words in pinyin transcription, which is customarily used in Chinese-English reference books. The system has been described in detail in Barlow's first dictionary and in the review of this work by John DeFrancis.¹

The present dictionary is trilingual—Chinese-Russian-English—and as such is aimed at both a Russian and an English readership reading Chinese. Therefore, apart from providing separate Russian and English renderings of the Chinese entries, the dictionary could be expected to have a certain coherence between the Russian and English texts in order to allow, if necessary, an English translation based on the Russian text and vice versa. For an English-speaking student of Chinese, knowledge of both Chinese and Russian may be unusual. However, for Russian students of sinology, English is a compulsory subject language. The Russian reader, therefore, would normally know both Chinese and English and would expect a Chinese-Russian-English dictionary to provide access to English from the Russian. Barlow's first dictionary is compiled in accordance with this principle. It has direct correspondences between the Russian and English texts; the number of meanings within an entry is the same in both languages; Russian grammatical comments are reflected in the English text; and, finally, Chinese examples included in the Russian text are translated into English. The present volume, however, differs from its predecessor, as there are few correspondences between the Russian and English texts. This does not constitute a problem when a word has only one meaning, but it becomes an obstacle when one comes across a polysemous word. For example, the word shàng (p. 6) has fifteen distinct meanings in the English text, whereas the number of meanings for the same Chinese word in Russian is only seven.

shàng

Russian text	English text
1. verx 'top'; verxnij 'upper'; sverxu	1. upper; upwards
'on top'
2. vyšeukazannyj 'aforesaid',	2. higher, superior, better
predyduščij 'preceding'
3. vysšego sorta 'superior',	3. first (part); preceding, previous
prevosxodnyj 'excellent'
4. podnimat'sja 'rise', vosxodit'	4. emperor
'mount'; napravljat'sja 'make one's
way to'
5. zakryvat' 'close', zapirat' 'lock'	5. to mount, go up, board, get on
6. poslelog obstojatel'stva mesta	6. to go to, leave for
'postposition with adverbial
modifiers of place': na more
'by the seaside'; na stole
'on a table'
7. suf. narečij, ukazyvajuščij na sferu	7. to present, submit
dejatel'nosti 'adverbial suffix
indicating field of activity':
v političeskom otnošenii, političeski
'politically, in the political aspect'
	8. to go/forge ahead
	9. to...