Upfront with Patience Zhou
The aptly named Patience Zhou edits the Oxford English-Chinese dictionary, the largest bilingual dictionary in the world. She talks to Anthony Chan about her passion for print and whether it gets boring reading thousands of words every day.
HK Magazine: You have recently released a new edition of the Oxford English-Chinese dictionary. What is the most interesting new word you’ve included this year?
Patience Zhou: It must be the word “jiong” [meaning dumbfounded]. It wasn’t included either in the corpus nor in the database originally, but our chief editor Julie Kleeman, an English native speaker who has been living in Beijing for years, understands slang pretty well. She saw the word on the internet and suggested including it in the dictionary.
HK: Was it difficult to edit this dictionary?
PZ: We need English native speakers to edit English content, but at the same time their Chinese has to be excellent. It’s easy to find Chinese natives with a high bilingual proficiency, but very difficult to find English native speakers who are just as good in Chinese.
HK: With people using online dictionaries to look up the meaning of words, what do you think the future holds for traditional print dictionaries?
PZ: Many people seem to think that the future is gloomy, but we believe that no matter what, there will still be some book lovers who enjoy the feeling of turning the pages and touching the paper. Besides, online dictionaries might not always be reliable. After all, different people have different needs, and I don’t think print dictionaries will be replaced so easily.
HK: Being surrounded by words all day, do you still enjoy reading in your down time?
PZ: Many people think that editing a dictionary means that there are countless documents piling up on my desk and that I have to read every single one of them. Actually, there are many interesting things to be done before and after editing, such as coming up with a cover design. During the editing process, we need to collaborate and communicate with many other people, so there is always a strong sense of teamwork. I still read at home but of course I don’t read a dictionary! They are for reference only and not for reading. I still read fiction, essays and some academic papers.
HK: Tell us about the most frustrating and satisfying
parts of the job.
PZ: Publishing dictionaries is like fusing together business and education. We earn money and help people at the same time—this is the satisfying part. The frustrating part is the stereotyping. Some people think the job is terribly tedious or that we are unscrupulous merchants who care only about making profits and so increase the cover price every year—they simply don’t understand how tough an editor’s job can be.