LHASA, Jan. 8  -- China plans to publish its first encyclopedic dictionary of the Tibetan language beginning in late 2015, according to the China Ethnic Publishing House Thursday.

The dictionary includes 13 volumes, covering technology, medicine, phonology, Buddhism, Nyaya philosophy, rhetoric, phraseology, prosody, drama, astrology, Tibetan literature, Bon belief and Tibetan culture, said Gyangkar, an editor at the China Ethnic Publishing House, the dictionary's publisher.

The first three volumes of the dictionary will be published by the end of this year and the remaining 15 volumes are expected to be published by 2018, said Gyangkar.

With an investment of about 10 million yuan (1.6 million U.S. dollars) from the Chinese government, compilation of the dictionary started in 2006 and involved efforts from more than 10 Tibetan language experts from Beijing and China's vast Tibetan-speaking regions.

The dictionary will have about 150,000 entries, three times that of the Tibetan-Chinese dictionary published in 1985, the most comprehensive Tibetan-language reference book until now.

It will include 9,000 new words and 60,000 technical terms. WeChat, the most popular instant messaging tool in China, will be called "trinqiong" in Tibetan in the dictionary. "Broadband" will be called "tayang" and "robot" will be called "trimen," said Gyangkar.

"Language is a mirror of the times," said Qoizha, deputy head of the Tibet regional compilation and translation bureau.