August 2005

We had to move out of our co-location cabinet due to rising bandwidth cost. We are currently temporarily hosted in a friend's cabinet. We are working on finding a more permanent location. Sorry for the inconvenience and outages for most of August.

Please consider a small donation to to help keep this service continue operating freely.

Another way to help us defray costs is to click on the banner ads. Thank you for your supports!

How to use the dictionary

To look for a word or phrase please type it in the field 'Word', select one or more dictionaries and the output format and press the 'Submit' button. Currently only the HTTP interface with HTML output format is supported. Later versions may support plain text or XML format.

Currently available dictionaries:

• English - Vietnamese dictionary (Từ điển Anh - Việt) (58.000 words)
• Vietnamese - English dictionary (Từ điển Việt - Anh) (11.000 words)
• French - Vietnamese dictionary (Từ điển Pháp - Việt) (48.000 words)
• Vietnamese - French dictionary (Từ điển Việt - Pháp) (39.000 words)
• Vietnamese dictionary (Từ điển tiếng Việt) (11.000 words)
• Dictionary of Vietnamese literary allusions (Điển cố văn học) (1.200 words)
• English - German dictionary (Từ điển Anh - Đức)
• German - English dictionary (Từ điển Đức - Anh)
• German - Vietnamese dictionary (Từ điển Đức - Việt)
• Vietnamese - German dictionary (Từ điển Việt - Đức)
• WordNet (English dictionary)

You can also download the dictionary to use off-line.

Vietnamese encodings and fonts

The following output formats are supported: Unicode (pre-composed, dựng sẵn), TCVN, VIQR, CP-1258, and VNI. The default encoding is pre-composed Unicode. CP-1258 is useful if you want to use composite Unicode characters for Vietnamese (Unicode tổ hợp). TCVN and VNI are two legacy Vietnamese encodings from the days before Unicode. To display the result in TCVN or VNI formats you need to install the appropriate fonts: '.VnTime' for TCVN and 'VNI-Times' for VNI. (You can get these fonts here.) Unicode TrueType fonts can be downloaded from Microsoft Website (only if you are using Windows 95/98/NT).

The VIQR convention

Using InternetExplorer version 5 or later you can type Vietnamese using TELEX or VNI convention. Otherwise you can lookup Vietnamese words using VIQR convention, for example: "Vie^.t Nam". The characters used for the diacritical marks are:

	MARK            CHAR    EXAMPLE

	breve            (      a(n na(n, ba(n khoa(n
	circumflex       ^      nha^n co^ng, lo^ng bo^ng
	horn             +      tu+o+ng tu+, que^ hu+o+ng
	acute            '      choa'ng va'ng, sa'ng suo^'t
	grave            `      lu` khu`, nga` nga` hook above
	hook above       ?      ho?i tha(m, va?i vo'c
	tilde            ~      ky~ ca`ng, na~o nu`ng
	dot below        .      Tra.ng Nguye^n, bo^.p cho^.p

	dd               dd     dda ti`nh, ddong ddu+a DD
	DD               DD     DDo^ng So+n, DDo^`ng Nai

Further Information

The Free Vietnamese Dictionary Project was started in 1997. Numerous people have contributed to the databases, most prominently Nguyen Tien Dzung, Pham Phuong Toan, To Long Thanh, Tran Cong So, and Ho Ngoc Duc. Since 1998 the server software and the databases are developed and maintained by Ho Ngoc Duc. The JavaScript component for typing Vietnamese was written by Tran Anh Tuan.

The official homepage of the project is http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~duc/Dict/

Recent changes

• 08/2003: minor program modifications (more output encodings supported)
• 06/2003: Program for PalmOS and PocketPC released.
• 06/2003: Vietnamese dictionary added (11.000 entries)
• 11/2002: Words added to French-Vietnamese dictionary
• 08/2002: Added Dien co Van hoc
• 07/2002: DICT format adopted
• 05/2000: French dictionaries added
• 04/1998: HTTP server up and running