The 115-year-old prestigious  Oxford Dictionary will now include popular new Chinese terms like"shanzhai" "youtiao" and "fangnu", as part of the modern Chinese language.
As China plays a more and more important role in the world economy, the Chinese language is forever developing, attracting more attention from people who want to understand this ancient yet lively language.
For instance, the word "shanzhai" is used to describe the countless knockoffs of iPhones or designer bags imprinted with Louis Vuitton logos.
Another new term in the new edition is the word "fangnu", or a "mortgage slave" --a term used to describe the phenomenon in large cities where well-educated youth complain of a miserable existence due to the heavy burden of a home mortgage.
All these new or often fashionable terms can be found in the new Oxford English -Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary that was unveiled in the recently concluded Beijing International Book Fair last week.
The dictionary now is available for retail sales since the beginning of this month.This dictionary is the largest single volume English-Chinese, Chinese-English dictionary and contains 670,000 words and phrases after five years of preparation.Sixty editors from the Oxford University Press and its partner in China--the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press--worked together on the project.According to Julie Kleeman, the dictionary's chief editor, most of the firm's editors were Chinese, while about one fourth were native-English speakers.
"We don't want to make it florid , we want it to be modern and conversational...many of the words in the present dictionary are no longer in use," said Kleeman."The need for studying Chinese by foreigners today is totally different from decades ago...Precise, native and practical--that is our main advantage," she said.
Kleeman said newer publications updates will be available only for the online version as language often changes too quickly for book versions to keep pace.The online version will also offer a Chinese phonetic pronunciation guide.The online version, allowing access via different platforms from the PC to the iPad, will be ready "as soon as possible", Kleeman said.
What is the main idea of the passage?
New Chinese terms like "shanzhai" and "fangnu" have got into Oxford Dictionary. The latest Oxford English-Chinese, Chinese-English Dictionary is on the market. Oxford Dictionary has become more fashionable due to the Chinese language. Beijing International Book Fair was where the new Oxford Dictionary was published