The Dictionary Issue Is Almost At An End

[Gaccha]

For Thai to English the best dictionary is:

"Concise Thai to English dictionary" (around 500 bahts)

Provides transliteration of target word. Idioms are offered and frequent sample sentences. Defines and describes

all

meanings for words (a crucial and often ignored point). Popularity- of- use of words is indicated. Not as many words as the one below but excellent for up to Medium-advanced level. I can't find this dictionary on the internet but it is widely available in bookshops in Bangkok.

I have not seen this dictionary on an electronic dictionary.

For English to Thai the best dictionary is:

'Oxford-River Books English-Thai Dictionary'

(New version April 2009) (around 900 bahts)

This identifies various meanings of words (110,00 words and phrases), provides idioms, provides sample sentences. Its weakness is to not provide transliteration for the target word and to not be pocket dictionary sized or soft-cover. It is written by the Chula Uni crowd.

This dictionary is available on various electronic dictionaries and since this dictionary amounts to an

app-killer

--it is so superior to all compeition that it is

hilarious

-- then you should now rush out and buy the electronic dictionary version.

They could be improved, but not by much. They bring an end to the amateur level of dictionary production. I now await a pocket version for the Oxford River.

Of course, you still have a problem of looking the words up without knowing the spelling in Thai... for the Thai to English dictionary.

[Rikker]

Oxford River Books is translated from a pre-determined standard English dictionary, the same one used for a number of languages in the same dictionary "series", with some specialized Thai-specific cultural material added.

I own a copy, and while the dictionary isn't bad, from the browsing I've done, the impression I came away with is that the end result of this technique of dictionary production is many inauthentic translations of the English, or in other words, the Thai they give is a translation of the English, and often not used in the real world.

[withnail]

I agree with Rikker. I think it's a very high quality dictionary, but is 100% a dictionary for learners of English. It will, for example, tell you that an air-conditioner is a "machine for adjusting the weather" when we all know that in the real world "air" would suffice.

[taxexile]

i can recommend " a new english-thai dictionary" , by dr. withai tiengbooranatham.

200,000 words , including a lot of scientific , medical , botanical and obscure words.

printed about 20 years ago , i picked it up in a second hand stall at chatuchak mkt.

if you spot it out there , its worth picking up. its not too bulky either , ( very small print though)

if you need to know the thai for

counterproposal

philomath

inculcate

spectrograph

gynandrous

bob

bobber and

bobbery

.... and believe it or not

discombobulate

then this is the one for you !

Edited December 2, 2008 by taxexile

[DavidHouston]

Tax Exile,

Thanks for the recommendation. I wonder about the utility of older dictionaries, especially in a world of quickly adapting languages. Older dictionaries, to include the excellent S. Sethaputr, are cultural gold mines but do they continue their relevance? Has Dr. Wit's dictionary been updated recently? Have any of the newer dictionaries, for example, incorporated the RID's "Dictionary of New Words"?

Thanks.

[taxexile]

DH

i dont know if its even still in print , never mind updated.

i doubt if i , or anyone else would ever have the need to use "discombobulate" as such, ( ทำไห้ย่ง or ก่อกวน , by the way!)

but sometimes i can be looking for the exact translation of an english word and get frustrated at not being able to find it in the smaller mainstream dictionaries , and i have to go looking up words of similar meaning but they never seem to convey exactly the meaning i am looking for , although the thai often seems to be the same for both the words i have looked up . thats why i find this dictionary (and the oxford river) so useful.

ive just opened it at a random page , and some of the words that i see here are

fuc_king up ( why do dictionaries always seem to fall open at this word !)

fuddy duddy

full blooded

fully fledged

full hearted

in the fullness of time

turning to the letter L

leaden

leading article

lean-to

leucocytosis

legislation

legislative

leniency

it really is quite comprehensive , and i think good old fashioned standard speech is and will always be relevant , especially for non native speakers. but this one is only 20 years old , its not that ancient !

i would like to find a good dictionary of colloquial thai too.

[DavidHouston]

I would be happy to pay an annual subscription to a dictionary vendor who continually updates an on-line Thai-English-Thai dictionary. A number of electronic media dictionaries on CD already exist, like Domnern Sathienpong. If these electronic dictionaries were supplemented with weekly or monthly updates on-line, real value would be added to the literature. Might there be a market for such a service?

[Rikker]

The Thai dictionary market just isn't very nimble. There are a few "brands" with high name recognition value, but as David points out they tend to be decades old and at high risk of being out of date. So Sethaputra, Dr. Wit, Mary Haas, and even the Royal Institute are on this list, though I continue to use all for regular references (I really like MacFarland's 1939 dictionary, too, but that's less well known.)

Domnoen-Sathienphong is the most up-to-date at this point, I'd say. Would others agree?

Also, Paiboon Publishing is in the midst of a massive rehaul of their ever-popular Thai-English-Romanized dictionary, nearing the completion of a big improvement/update of the pocket size, and once that's out the door will use it as the basis for an expanded intermediate learner's dictionary, and eventually a not-so-abridged (I hesitate to say "unabridged") big dictionary even further down the line. They will be designed for foreign learners, at least.

Giving an explanation of a word in Thai is not the same as giving the Thai equivalent, so it's important to know the intended audience of a given dictionary.

[kriswillems]

The biggest disadvantage of all dictionaries I have used until today is that they use language that people don't use. If I copy the language from the dictionaries people look at me like a come from a different planet.

For instance:

nuclear energy: พลังงานปรมาณู

But people say: พลังงานนิวเคลียร์

airport: ท่าอากาศยาน

But people say: สนามบิน

air conditioning:เครื่องปรับอากาศ

ฺีBut people say: แอร์

bus: รถโดยสารประจำทาง or รถประจำทาง

But people say: รถเมล์ or even บัส

My favourite online dictionary is the sealang dictionary together with the RID. Before I used thai2english, but I stopped using it because I get a headache from the automatic transliterations (which seems to be more wrong than right).

I am not 100% happy with any paper dictionary. The best paper dictionaries I have used are:

Thai-English dictionary : Domnern Sathienpong

English-Thai dictionany (of contemporary usage) : P. Sethaputra (พ. เสถบุตร) which is not the same as the more famous dictionary of S. Sethaputr

[meadish_sweetball]

nuclear energy: พลังงานปรมาณู

But people say: พลังงานนิวเคลียร์

airport: ท่าอากาศยาน

But people say: สนามบิน

air conditioning:เครื่องปรับอากาศ

ฺีBut people say: แอร์

bus: รถโดยสารประจำทาง or รถประจำทาง

But people say: รถเมล์ or even บัส

The books we used at university (from Australian National University) would provide both the formal and the colloquial versions of words. I think this is the way the language needs to be taught. Being able to switch registers, when required, is an important skill.

[Gaccha]

This is all interesting.

My primary concern is getting a sample sentence when I look the word up. If there is no sentence, how do I know where to place it, how it works with the words around it, and what idioms it appears in...

I just bought an astonishing book called A Dictionary of Japanese Idioms. It is a cruel reminder of the limitations of the Thai-Eng Eng- Thai dictionary market. But more specifically, it tells you all the idioms and explains if they are archaic, obsolete, dialect, elegant, colloquial, vulgar, or else slang. I have always wondered how to say "kill yourself laughing" in Japanese, but no more: they literally say "I take in my stomach".

[Rikker]

Copious sample sentences is the claim to fame of the Library Edition of So Sethaputra's Thai-English dictionary (I can't recall right off if his English-Thai has them, too, but I think it does).

Note that the desk and pocket editions omit the example sentences for space reasons.

[Gaccha]

A cracking dictionary that would be very easy to turn into a Thai-Eng Eng-Thai dictionary is this one in Japa-Thai Thai-Jap: Kodansha's Furigana series. Since the exact same dictionary is already in Jap-Eng and Eng-Jap it would just need the English transposed to where the Japanese is. (see http://www.chulabook.com/cgi-bin/main/2007...=9789747471090)

The English version is here: http://www.amazon.com/Kodanshas-Furigana-E...y/dp/4770020554 . Have a read of the reviews at the site.

You can have a look yourself by going to Kinokuniya Central Siam and browsing both versions. Note the perfect sample sentences, the careful transliteration, the explanations of anticipated cultural confusions, the identification of formality and slang. The Japanese have it very easy.

The dictionary is only around the 14,000 word mark but if you need more than that you are unlikely to need the sample sentences that make this such an effective language acquisition tool.

[aitch]

Hello,

I have been practicing/studying Thai everyday for quite sometime now (bus and train to and from work gives me a couple hours easy). Stop in at the library to check in on this Thai Language forum (don't have a computer yet).

I just started to give daily journal a go. When i have trouble (often), I have been relying on . . .

Mary Haas; Thai - English student dictionary

Dr Wit; Thai - English dictionary (mini edition)

Dr Wit; English -Thai dictionary (with idioms and phrases)

I will be in Thailand in 10 days. I should be looking for Domnoen-Sathienphong ?

could someone recommend a hard and a soft copy (Thai - English) dictionary for someone writing a journal ?

[Fore Man]

The biggest disadvantage of all dictionaries I have used until today is that they use language that people don't use. If I copy the language from the dictionaries people look at me like a come from a different planet.

For instance:

nuclear energy: พลังงานปรมาณู

But people say: พลังงานนิวเคลียร์

airport: ท่าอากาศยาน

But people say: สนามบิน

air conditioning:เครื่องปรับอากาศ

ฺีBut people say: แอร์

bus: รถโดยสารประจำทาง or รถประจำทาง

But people say: รถเมล์ or even บัส

My favourite online dictionary is the sealang dictionary together with the RID. Before I used thai2english, but I stopped using it because I get a headache from the automatic transliterations (which seems to be more wrong than right).

I am not 100% happy with any paper dictionary. The best paper dictionaries I have used are:

Thai-English dictionary : Domnern Sathienpong

English-Thai dictionany (of contemporary usage) : P. Sethaputra (พ. เสถบุตร) which is not the same as the more famous dictionary of S. Sethaputr

I concur that using an English-Thai dictionary always presents the same problem--your listener gives you a blank stare time and time again. I would sure like to see a version that offers translations for words people actually use in common idiom (not crude lower class slang, another problem by itself for a farang trying to learn which Thai word to select).

[yeows]

I bought A Dictionary of English Collocations with Thai Translations a couple of years back. It is an interesting dictionary that provides meanings, phrases and examples which are quite commonly used. However my Thai is not good and I have no idea if the translations are properly done. Has anyone come across this dictionary?

[tgeezer]

The biggest disadvantage of all dictionaries I have used until today is that they use language that people don't use. If I copy the language from the dictionaries people look at me like a come from a different planet.

For instance:

nuclear energy: พลังงานปรมาณู

But people say: พลังงานนิวเคลียร์

airport: ท่าอากาศยาน

But people say: สนามบิน

air conditioning:เครื่องปรับอากาศ

ฺีBut people say: แอร์

bus: รถโดยสารประจำทาง or รถประจำทาง

But people say: รถเมล์ or even บัส

Another try:

In order to know what you want to say you can either say few words which mean everything necessary 'go water room' or you can be more elaborate. The best way to brevity is obviously pidgeon. สนามบิน is no good as a translation of airport(aeroplane port) = ท้าอากาศยาน is correct after you have to found the meaning of ท่า of course. Thais use these dictionaries too. As in my try with ยิง dictionaries tend to follow English meanings without question, then because there is so much English around this becomes the meaning in Thai also.

[meadish_sweetball]

สนามบิน is no good as a translation of airport(aeroplane port) = ท้าอากาศยาน is correct after you have to found the meaning of ท่า of course.

My spontaneous mental image of an 'airport' is the collective unity of a terminal building, an air traffic control tower and one or more airstrips on a large field. I don't think of a 'sea port' at all, although the thought of comparing the two have obviously occurred at some stage, but rather as an afterthought than as the general rule.

Along the same lines I have once or twice mused internally over the image of a vast emptiness combined with a pirate ship (=spaceship), but the picture I actually see mentally is one resembling one of the Imperial Destroyers out of Star Wars or the Enterprise out of Star Trek. Neither of these images have much in common with modern day oil tankers or the sailing ships of yore.

This is somewhat returning to the same point you and I have discussed earlier.

You're right about the meaning of the components making up the expressions, but the concept of translation is about conveying the originally intended idea as effectively as possible to the recipient, it is not about splitting the language up into individual component parts and analyzing them, although that is also a somewhat valuable or at least enjoyable exercise for language learners like us.

So I see nothing wrong with สนามบิน as a translation of 'airport' since it is the expression most commonly used in spoken Thai to refer to the same physical manifestation as 'airport'.

As I said earlier, all that is required, really, is for the dictionary to properly indicate the style value of the terms provided and ideally, to provide authentic examples of their usage. Are we in agreement about this?