The Construction of a Large-Scale Hong Kong Chinese Lexicon with Multilingual Translations for Chinese-as-an-Additional-Language (CAL) Students

Abstract

. This paper describes the structure and compilation process of a Hong Kong Chinese Lexicon being developed for a forthcoming Cantonese keyboard. The lexicon contains more than 120,000 headwords including common words and high-frequency named entities, and incorporates information such as Jyutping romanization, indicative word frequency, simple translations in five languages (English, Hindi, Indonesian, Nepali, Urdu), disambiguation, POS information, speech register and cross-register synonyms. The lexicon improves the Chinese learning experience of CAL students in two ways, (a) to introduce and promote the effective usage of input methods and dictionaries for learners that facilitate them to locate the correct choice of word or phrase within a particular context, and (b) to provide additional register-specific data that enables advanced learners to further expand their vocabulary. This lexicon can be used in conjunction with wordnet or LIWC (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count) for a range of natural language processing tasks.