The First Six Years 1963-69

w ith the enthusiastic support o f Butterfield & Swire (Hong Kong) L td ., Lee Hysan Estate Co., L td . and Sin Poh Amalgamated (H .K .) L td . Each o f these firms contributed $100,000 to help underwrite expenses in connection w ith this scholarly and intricate undertaking. The final draft o f the manuscript in clean typed copy is expected to be ready towards the end o f 1970. Dr. L in is a w riter o f world renown and also a linguistics ex pert. He studied linguistics at Harvard and Leipzig in his student days and was Professor o f Linguistics in the National Peking University in the nineteen twenties and Research Fellow in L in guistics in the Academia Sinica in the thirties. He is the inventor of the Chinese index system and has been a collaborator in the Official Romanization. Dr. L in is uniquely qualified to direct the D ictionary Project. He conceives the Dictionary in terms o f “ words” which are o rd i narily treated as “ characters” . To Dr. L in , the “ word” may con tain several characters according to current Chinese usage and a “w ord” may be marked L L (L iterary Language), Colloquial, Dialect, Slang, MC (M iddle Chinese taken from Sung lyrics, Yuan drama and M ing and Ching novels), etc. Such indications of different usages o f “ words” w ill be one o f the distinctive features that w ill make this dictionary different from all o f its predecessors. Dr. L in has personally determined what “ words” w ill be included ， and has also translated them into idiomatic English. The Dictionary w ill contain about 7,000 characters and more than 100,000 entries or “ words” . The first draft w ill consist o f over 13,000 manuscript sheets. A ll o f the Chinese characters are w r it ten by hand. After the first draft is ready ， there w ill be a long process o f meticulous checking and rechecking ， to be followed by the preparation o f an introduction on Chinese language, gram mar and levels o f usage. Dr. L in himself calls the Dictionary “ a stitch-by-stitch work” ， to be carried out steadily, patiently and painstakingly. The final draft o f the D ictionary w ill be ready around the end o f 1970. By then ， to use Dr. L in ' s own words ， “ the Chinese language w ill have received a linguistic treatment for the first time” . A Translation/Publication Project is also under consideration. The objectives o f this Project are two fo ld : to introduce modern Western thought in the social sciences and humanities ， and to de monstrate modern methodology in research. To begin w ith, se lections w ill be made from authoritative publications in English which reflect original research and provide a basic and compre hensive coverage o f the subject matter. The selection ， editing and translation into Chinese w ill be undertaken by bilingual scholars among the visiting professors ， the teaching faculty in the University 56