The New Century French-Chinese Dictionary, which was published in January, has received favorable comments from both lexicographers and distinguished scholars of the French language.

"This is a dictionary that keeps pace with the development of modern society," Chen Naifang, president of Beijing Foreign Studies University, said on Monday at a seminar on the dictionary.

This is mainly reflected by the entries that the dictionary contains.

For example, it has an entry for Martina Navratilova, one of the most dominant players in the history of women tennis by winning nine Wimbledon single titles.

According to Deputy Editor-in-Chief Xue Jiancheng, the dictionary has entries for many proper names that other dictionaries seldom contain, such as historical figures and names of almost all French towns.

In total, the dictionary, published by the Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press, has about 120,000 entries. In addition to words and phrases that are in common use, it also contains many science and technical terms.

The press said it took dozens of paramount scholars of French language more than 10 years to compile the dictionary. "The compilers have different research fields. Their concerted efforts have guaranteed the success of the dictionary," said Li Pengyi, president of the publishing house.

Li's company is one of China's largest publishers of foreign language books such as English, Japanese, Germany and Spanish, and ranks second in the market of French language books.

Li said New Century is a brand for dictionaries that his company is devoted to building.

More New Century dictionaries, in Chinese-French, German-Chinese, Chinese-German, will follow.

(China Daily February 25, 2005)