The aims of this post is to introduce you to Stardict, a free & opensource international dictionary, provide some useful and free dictionaries including Pāli-English English-Pāli. Whenever you visit a web page in Pāli, just select or double click on a Pāli word, Stardict will auto look up the meanings of that word in English, you do not need to type the Pāli word.
If you want to type Pāli word, please see part 5. And if you just want to read the Tipitaka in Pali, you can use Pāli Text Reader, Pāli Text Reader itself contains Pāli-English dictionary.
This post has 5 parts as listed bellow:
1-What is Stardict
2-Downnload& Install Stardict
3-Add dictionaries to Stardict
4-Stardict pronounces English words
5-More Pāli resources
1-What is Stardict?
StarDict is a Cross-Platform and international dictionary Software. It has powerful features such as “Glob-style pattern matching”, “Scan selection word,” “Fuzzy query,” etc. Stardict Version3.0 has developed a lot of new functions, such as Full-text translation, Net Dict.
Just select the Pali word on the website, Stardict will look for its means in English
- Mouse Inquiry: When “scan” option is selected, you can capture the words via mouse to translate.
- More Powerful!: Thousands of free dictionaries can be found on the internet. Choose your own favorites.
- Net Dict : Dictionary installation on your own computer is not necessary any more. Click the main menu icon on the top right of the corner, choose “Preferences” option. Here you can set Net dict. Register or log on your account, then you can use the Net Dict with your own dictionaries.
- Full-text translation: Click text translate icon on the left. With google, yahoo, Altavista, Excite Janpan translation engines you can tranlate from one language to another with satisfactory results.
- My other posts about Stardict can be found Here
2-Downnload& Install Stardict
According to which OS you are using, you can downloa d 1 of these versions and install Stardict. For the Window OS and Linux system, just double click on the downloaded file to start to install. (If you can’t downloa d the files here, please try this link.)
For Linux (Debian, Ubuntu) stardict_3.0.1-1_i386.deb 1.6 MB (Or you can install via terminal: sudo apt-get install stardict)
For Window OS: stardict-3.0.2.exe 10.6 MB
For Mac OS http://sourceforge.net/projects/stardict/files/stardict/3.0.1/StarDict-3.0.1-MacOSX.zip/download
3-Add dictionaries to Stardict
Here are some of Stardict Dictionaries that I am using:
Pāli-English-English-Pāli-Vietnamese
1) English-Pali của ngài A.P. Buddhadatta
2) Pali-English của ngài A.P. Buddhadatta
3) Pali-Việt của ngài Bửu Chơn
4) Thuật ngữ Luật tạng Pali-Việt của Sư Giác Nguyên
5) Abhidhamma Pali-Việt của ngài Tịnh Sự
6) Việt-Pali của Sadi Định Phúc
7) Pali-English English-Pali Dictionary
8) Pali-English Dictionary-Pali Text Society
9) CKJ Buddhism Dictionary
Download links:
http://cid-2aaf1aaefb464249.office.live.com/self.aspx/.Public/stardict
Mirror links:
1- Pali Dictionaries and Buddhism Terms:
http://cuongdang.info/stardict/pali/3Buddhism-and-8Pali-dicts.zip
2- Some useful dictionaries for Vietnamese (En-Vn, Vn-En, Fr-Vn, Vn-Fr, Vn-Vn, Rus-Vn) 6 dictionaries
http://cuongdang.info/stardict/6dics-En-Vn-and-others-for-vietnamese.zip
For other language dictionaries you can download them from
http://stardict.sourceforge.net/Dictionaries.php
or
http://reciteword.cosoft.org.cn/stardict-iso/stardict-dic/
A- Install Dictionaries in Linux:
If you are using Ubuntu Linux and new to Ubuntu, you can use this method:
Firstly, right click on the downloaded compressed file and choose Extract Here, you will get a new folder (*).
Using sudo nautilus to copy dics to /usr/share/stardict/dic
Now open the Terminal (Go to the menu Applications/Accessories/Terminal) type:
sudo nautilus
provide your root password, then the nautilus (like window explorer on Window^^) will be opened. Now just browse to the uncompress folder (*) and copy them to usr/share/stardict/dic.
Or you can use this method:
To install these tarball dictionaries, do this:
tar -xjvf a.tar.bz2
sudo mv a /usr/share/stardict/dic
B – Install Dictionaries in Window OS:
Use free uncompress program 7 Zip or other unzip softwares like Winrar…. to extract the .tar.bz2 file, which you get a directory, then move this directory to the dic\, such as C:\Program files\stardict\dic\
C- Install Dictionaries in Mac OS X:
tar -xjvf a.tar.bz2 -C /opt/gtk/usr/share/stardict/dic
4-Stardict pronounces English words
WyabdcRealPeopleTTS package make StarDict pronounce those English words. It is just many .wav files. In Linux, you can extract(tar -xjvf) the
tarball at “/usr/share/”. In Windows, you can use
7 Zip or other unzip softwares like Winrar to extract the
tarball and install it at “C:\Program Files\” or “Program Files\StarDict\”.
5-More Pāli resources
0- Chaṭṭha Saṅgāyana Tipitaka Version 4.0 (CST4):
CST4 is a desktop client for browsing and searching the Pāli Canon
http://www.tipitaka.org/cst/cst4-2008-04-20-beta15.exe
Noted, Window XP users, need to install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 first to be able to run CST4 properly: Download Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 from:
3- Pāli Keyboard and typing (now Window version only): http://www.tipitaka.org/keyboard
UPDATED on Aug 26:
A Pali-English text reader Firefox Extension that allows Pali students to read the Pali Canon. Automatically recognizes pali words and gives definitions from the CPED and PED, as well as DPPN if available. Includes text search and dictionary lookup.
If you meet difficulties in installing or using Stardict, don’t hesitate to leave a comment here or send an email to me:
info @ cuongdang .info
Thank you!
^^ ):
