Shabdanjali English-Hindi Dictionary

(version 2.02)

Data Sources

A primary source for English-Hindi data provided here is the 'The Students Practical Dictionary', fifth edition, Published by Ram Narain Lal, year 1936.  The copyright for this dictionary has expired.

English-Hindi Dictionary: Version 1.0 which is based on the above dictionary thus became a major source for electronic database of English words and their Hindi meanings. English-Hindi Dictionary: Version 1.0 was released in 1999. It has about 15,000 entries and does not include example sentences. This was completed by the Akshar Bharati Group now based at the Language Technologies Research Centre of the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT), Hyderabad, India.

Oxford's Advanced Learner's Dictionary has been another major source of reference for English words and their various shades of meaning. For the Hindi meanings a number of English-Hindi dictionaries were referred to. Hardev Bahri's Hindi-English dictionary, Pathak's Advanced English-Hindi dictionary, Father Kamil Bulke's English-Hindi dictionary are to name a few.

Word Net has also been a source for various senses of an English word and its example sentences.

Dictionary Format & Special Symbols Used

The entries in the dictionary have the following format:
"English word", "Grammatical category", "1.Hindi meaning" Example sentence.

For every successive Hindi meaning a new example sentence is given. Some of the SYMBOLS used here have special information content.  These are:

 /   : An oblique sign between two words shows alternative meanings which can be treated as synonyms.
[ ]  : Square brackets mean optionality in meaning, for example the dictionary entry for the English verb 'adjoin' is:

    "adjoin","V","1. संयुक्त होना [करना]
    The telegraph office adjoins the post office.

    Here the bracketed word ' करन ' is an option that can be used instead of ' होना ' depending on the context.

{  }  : Curly brackets after an entry indicate some additional relevant information about the entry which is not captured by the Hindi meaning entered against it.

Abbreviations of the Grammatical Category Names

Abbreviations used for category names are:

More on Shabdanjali

History

English-Hindi Dictionary version 1.0 (released in 1999), containing 15,000 head entries was the electronic copy of 'The Students Practical Dictionary', fifth edition, Published by Ram Narain Lal, in 1936 for which the copyright was over.

English-Hindi Dictionary version 2.0 (released in 2001), is an enhanced version of version 1.0, with increased number of entries and example sentences for each sense. Total number of entries in this version reached slightly above 25,000 words. The dictionary was developed through a collaborative effort. Needs quality improvement.

The present dictionary - Shabdanjali, version 2.02 (released in 2002) is an upgraded version of version 2.0. Now the stress is both on quality improvement and quantity enhancement. It was decided to call the version as 2.02 mainly considering the required qualitative improvement. The dictionary is being continuously upgraded based on the feedback from users and an improved version will be released whenever there is substantial change from the previous version.

Since the contributors of the database are from varying backgrounds, including school children, the quality of the content is not uniform. There is no claim of excellence in quality. In fact, it needs to be further improved. It is being continuously improved. We also look forward to feedback and suggestions by the users for its improvement.

The idea here is to provide a basic electronic lexical database for English - Hindi which the users can further improve and develop according to their needs.

MISSING PIECES IN THE DICTIONARY

An effort has been made to make the entries as complete as possible. However, a number of entries need elaboration.  There are entries

• where the headword is given with its grammatical category but does not have either the Hindi meaning or an example sentence.
• which have their Hindi equivalents but no example sentences.
• which have the English headword, its grammatical category, an example to show its semantic content but no Hindi equivalent.

Contributors

Shabdanjali (version 2.02): English-Hindi dictionary was developed through a voluntary collaborative effort. (It is an upgraded version of English-Hindi dictionary, version 2.0) The dictionary needs improvement both in terms of quality and quantity. Volunteers are welcome.

Work on the present version 2.02 of the dictionary started in May 1999 in Ratlam. A large number of students from class IX to XII participated in a workshop and entered database for the dictionary. The workshop was conducted by Dr. Vineet Chaitanya, Amba P. Kulkarni and Dr. Dipti Misra Sharma, members of the Akshar Bharati Group. Prabha worked on the data provided by them and brought it to the present quality level.

Mr. Pandit, then Principal, TRANSLAM-Academy School, Meerut, took active interest and associated his school to this activity. Encouraged by his enthusiasm and commitment for the activity, the students and teachers especially Ms. Himany Chaudhary, Ms. Mukta, Ms. Shashi Sharma of TRANSLAM academy contributed a large amount of database. They took keen interest in the activity and expressed their fascination about how much there was in a word to think about. An area that had not been given serious thoughts to earlier.

Under the able supersivion of Ms. Chandrakanta Auluck, students of classes X-XII and even some college students of St. Francis Jr. College, Secunderabad contributed to the database.

In addition to school and college students, a number of individuals from various cities, such as Belgaon, Delhi, Calcutta, Chandigarh, Gwalior, Ambala, Roorkie, Hyderabad etc. have contributed to this massive task.

A team of workers in Hyderabad worked tirelessly to bring some uniformity to the database developed by various people. It is the effort of all these people and more which has made the compilation of the present dictionary possible.

The core team is supported by Language Technologies Research Centre, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad. The Centre itself is supported by Satyam Computers which has also agreed to support this as a free software under GPL.

VOLUNTEERS ARE WELCOME

As mentioned, the quality of the database needs further improvement. You can also contribute to the database by taking up any of the following tasks:

• Improve the present database by correcting errors.
• Enhance the database by adding information on the present headwords or including more headwords.
• For each Hindi meaning there is an example sentence to provide the right context. Presently, most of these examples are in English (except for letter 'h' which has Hindi examples with English lexical items). It is desirable to provide Hindi translations of the English examples and vice-versa. You can contribute by giving these translations.

IF YOU WANT TO JOIN THE ACTIVITY PLEASE CONTACT
Dr. Dipti Misra Sharma
Akshar Bharati Group
Language Technologies Research Centre
Indian Institute of Information Technology
Gacchibowli
Hyderabad - 500 019
Tel: 0(40) 300 1412 or
    PBX 0(40) 300 1967
FAX: (910)(40) 300 1413
e-mail: dipti@iiit.net