China published a new bilingual military dictionary including
more than 250,000 entries of military terms, most of which are
taken from US armed forces publications.
The major sources of "An English-Chinese Military Dictionary,"
compiled by linguists and military experts teamed by the People's
Liberation Army (PLA) University of Foreign Languages, include the
DOD Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, which was
published by the Pentagon in 2002.
The military dictionary compilation work, among others,
"reflects efforts of the PLA to keep abreast of the new ideas and
technologies of the globally prevailing revolution in military
affairs," said the publisher, the Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press.
The new military dictionary covers the up-to-date words, phrases
and terms currently used by the US armed forces, while previously
published dictionaries were obsolete, which hardly satisfy need of
Chinese service people at modern times, the publisher said.
Many entries of the dictionary, sold at 328 yuan (US$43.3) each
copy, explain new ideas and concepts in military science,
diplomacy, engineering, meteorology, communication and
intelligence.
The PLA university also have also compiled four new
foreign-Chinese military dictionaries, including Russian, Japanese,
Korean and Vietnamese.
The Chinese armed forces have launched a revolution in military
affairs since the 1990s, with a core mission of building
digitalized armed forces in order to win a regional war at the
information age.
The Chinese legislature approved the 2007 fiscal year military
budget worth 350.921 billion yuan (US$44.94 billion), with an
annual increase of 17.8 percent.
(Xinhua News Agency Augusr 21, 2007)