Tibetan - English Dictionary
| By Chandra Das | Places to Purchase: |
| Published by Paljor Publications | |
| 1998 (First ed. 1902) - 1353 pages | |
| ISBN: 81-85132-16-X | |
Summary
This is a Tibetan - English dictionary that has been around for a century. The compact version reviewed here has very small font size which is hard to read.
Review
This dictionary was first published in 1902 and it has become one of the classics. The copy I have is the compact version; this is what most bookstores carry. The large version is available on Wisdom Books website by special order. The compact version has the same number of entries, only the physical size is smaller. The font is good, but very small for secondary entries and it might be hard for some people to read.The fact that this dictionary was compiled a century ago is, to some extent, not the best news to the student of modern Tibetan, but this will not be of a concern to the student of classical Tibetan. This does not mean that this dictionary is outdated or not worth using; on the contrary, it has an abundance of information and will be of great help when translating. However, if you use it to translate a recent newspaper article you will find that there are many words that are not in this dictionary, and that might be because those words are recent addition in the language or the spelling has changed.
There is an electronic version of this dictionary now available from Padma Karpo Translation Committee. Three years of work went into creating it and the result is a more accurate dictionary. Both the Tibetan and English part have been improved and you can search the secondary entries as well as the main entries. Being a user of another dictionary from PKTC I can state that those dictionaries are fantastic to use. Looking up an entry is very quick, the font is great and you can search the secondary entries.