The Current Status of Sorting Order of Tibetan Dictionaries and Standardization

PACLIC 20 / Wuhan, China / 1-3 November, 200

The Current Status of Sorting Order of Tibetan Dictionaries and Standardization

Abstract. This paper discusses the problem of sorting orders of Tibetan dictionaries and Tibetan electronic databases. The alphabetical sequence of Tibetan language has being gradually formed by popular usage in the long history, in which many cognitive senses and cultural connotations lie embedded of Tibetan people, also there are a few influence of foreign elements and irrational elements. However, on the bases of the analyses of the background, the paper proposes three standardizing principles for compiling Tibetan dictionaries: agreement, compatibility, and rationality. In light of the three principles, the paper designs a set of digital codes for each letter or character and assigns distinctive sorting values to all existing words in the electronic dictionary with corresponding algorithm, which revises some serious errors in a previous paper. The method of compiling Tibetan word order mentioned above has been accomplished in our software system