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China to Publish Internet Language Dictionary
A Chinese dictionary consisting of popular language used on the Internet will be published in June,according to China Youth Daily January 5.
As Chinese surfers exceed 10 million, special terms used on the web has increased. The dictionary, compiled by the Economics Press, will be an assortment of today's latest Internet words and expressions with over 2,000 entries.
Su Yaobin, editor of the dictionary, told the newspaper that he was confused by the Chinese translation of "E-mail" (his sister in Chinese), "cool" (ku or cruel) and "windows" (wen dou si or faint) when he logged on to Internet for the first time.
He said the new dictionary is trying to be practical. With the dictionary in hand, new Internet users will soon be able to overcome the language barrier. For those who don't know much about the cyberspace, it will help them know about the latest technology.
The compiling of the dictionary is also useful for research on the social linguistics of new words and expressions, Su noted.
Statistics show that around 800 new words and expressions on average appeared every year since China decided to open up and reform 20 years ago. A Chinese dictionary published in 1996 added over 5,000 new entries. Insiders estimate that new words will spread faster and more conveniently through Internet.
The new dictionary's chief editor Yu Genyuan, with Beijing Broadcasting Institute, characterized the new Cyber language as lively, humorous, human and teasing. For instance, he said, to call each other sister and brother made one, in the virtual community, feel like a family and "dinosaur" was to tease a bad-tempered girl.
Although Yu said that some expressions were composed only for convenience and simply translated were not very gracious, he admitted Cyber language comes from real life and would in turn influence people's daily life.
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