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This is a labour of love, the result of 19 years of work. But it is still work in progress: this is a first draft on which corrections and additions are still being made. Nevertheless, given our times it is imperative that a comprehensive Uyghur-English dictionary be made available on the web rapidly and it therefore seems preferable to have this draft available now than wait until all the work has been completed. This will allow user-compiler interaction in the correction and finalisation process: a forum has been set up to enable you to send comments, suggestions and criticisms, which are welcome since they will contribute to improving on this draft.
What we can offer you at this time is a basic list of 70,120 Uyghur entries, the etymology of words of non Turkic origin and indications of vowel length as well as attempted English translations.
Uyghur words listed in this dictionary mostly belong to what is referred to as Modern Uyghur. Ancient Uyghur words (especially words found in classical, or Chaghatay, texts) will be added shortly in both original and modern spellings.
A section including more information on Uyghur history, geography and culture is being compiled. The forum will allow readers and other interested parties to make their own contributions to the process and the final product. All this will also be included in the illustrated (image and sound) CD version which is in preparation and in a printed version which is also being contemplated.
Romanised Uyghur is written using the UKY system, which has become prevalent on the internet in the past few years. UKY can be used for the input of Uyghur words in the search window. Inputs can also be made using either of the two drop-down keyboards for Arabic Uyghur and Cyrillic Uyghur (the latter has been added as a response to requests by readers from the CIS). The spelling of Uyghur words follows the rules of the Xinjiang Language and Script Committee, in spite of all their imperfections.
This dictionary was originally designed to assist translation from Uyghur to English, but it can also be used in the reverse direction. A text input box in the search window allows the input of keywords in English to search for Uyghur equivalents.
Finally, the team: the draft has been compiled by Jean Rahman Duval with the assistance of Waris A. Janbaz, who developed all the software support and provided also a lot of input in the final stages of the preliminary compilation. Tim Reilly came up with the idea of web publishing and generously designed and hosted the UDP trial site. This effort is not a business venture and therefore access is free. Nevertheless we have copyrighted this preliminary version and, for the time being, we have limited searches to a maximum of 100 entries a day per user as a precaution against unscrupulous operators who might want to take undue advantage of other people's work.
What we can offer you at this time is a basic list of 70,120 Uyghur entries, the etymology of words of non Turkic origin and indications of vowel length as well as attempted English translations.
Uyghur words listed in this dictionary mostly belong to what is referred to as Modern Uyghur. Ancient Uyghur words (especially words found in classical, or Chaghatay, texts) will be added shortly in both original and modern spellings.
A section including more information on Uyghur history, geography and culture is being compiled. The forum will allow readers and other interested parties to make their own contributions to the process and the final product. All this will also be included in the illustrated (image and sound) CD version which is in preparation and in a printed version which is also being contemplated.
Romanised Uyghur is written using the UKY system, which has become prevalent on the internet in the past few years. UKY can be used for the input of Uyghur words in the search window. Inputs can also be made using either of the two drop-down keyboards for Arabic Uyghur and Cyrillic Uyghur (the latter has been added as a response to requests by readers from the CIS). The spelling of Uyghur words follows the rules of the Xinjiang Language and Script Committee, in spite of all their imperfections.
This dictionary was originally designed to assist translation from Uyghur to English, but it can also be used in the reverse direction. A text input box in the search window allows the input of keywords in English to search for Uyghur equivalents.
Finally, the team: the draft has been compiled by Jean Rahman Duval with the assistance of Waris A. Janbaz, who developed all the software support and provided also a lot of input in the final stages of the preliminary compilation. Tim Reilly came up with the idea of web publishing and generously designed and hosted the UDP trial site. This effort is not a business venture and therefore access is free. Nevertheless we have copyrighted this preliminary version and, for the time being, we have limited searches to a maximum of 100 entries a day per user as a precaution against unscrupulous operators who might want to take undue advantage of other people's work.