While an improvement in some ways over the previous (now defunct) incarnation of the Royal Institute Dictionary online, the newly-released RID 1999 online for now may have to remain in the "not ready for primetime" category.
I noticed a while back that it was missing large chunks of two letters of the alphabet: ต and ส.
ต Complete up through the entry ตา ๒. That means entries from ตาก to ไต้หวัน are missing. If you compare it to the paper version, that's 28 pages of the dictionary, or roughly 400 entries gone (one entry may include several or even dozens of subentries).
ส This one ends at สาด ๒. So we're missing from สาต to ไสว, a whopping 64 pages, or upwards of 1000 missing entries.
So what gives? I emailed the Royal Institute about this over a month ago, and no word yet. In fact, since I first noticed it, now the letter ต doesn't work at all (any word beginning with ต will return no results, and you can't browse the letter, either), while that large chunk of ส is still AWOL. Let's hope this means an update is on the way.
Thanks for the analysis of the RID website. It sure seemed that the new on-line version returned fewer responses to queries than the old one but I had no idea that major portions were missing. I bet that the good folks at RID were also unaware of the deficiency. I very much applaud your counting the pages.
ReplyDeleteThe RID is Thailand's official language standard and getting it on-line was a major step forward in creating accessibility for much of the Thai community. While the text itself is not very expensive, even in Thai terms at 600 baht, this is a work not often found in Thai households. In addition portability for this gigantic text is a major issue. While the new Matichon dictionary represents a private industry attempt to update the venerable RDI, the Thai-speaking community really needs the RID as a baseline for the language.
Let's hope that the RI will get the expertise it needs in database and internet technology and the assistance of a dedicated staff to allow the dictionary to be disseminated to the on-line Thai community.
Thanks again for your continued diligence.
Thanks for the analysis of the RID website. It sure seemed that the new on-line version returned fewer responses to queries than the old one but I had no idea that major portions were missing. I bet that the good folks at RID were also unaware of the deficiency. I very much applaud your counting the pages.
ReplyDeleteThe RID is Thailand's official language standard and getting it on-line was a major step forward in creating accessibility for much of the Thai community. While the text itself is not very expensive at 600 baht for a work of this size, this is a volume not often found in Thai households. In addition portability of this gigantic text is a major issue. While the new Matichon dictionary represents a private industry attempt to update the venerable RDI, the Thai-speaking community really needs the RID as a baseline for the language.
Let's hope that the RI will get the expertise it needs in database and internet technology and the assistance of a dedicated staff to allow the dictionary to be disseminated to the on-line Thai community.
Thanks again for your continued diligence.
David