Galileo originally planned to create a 20 volume Chinese French dictionary called the "General Book of Chinese", but only completed the first volume. This dictionary has critically absorbed and innovatively developed the original "Peiwen Yunfu" in terms of Chinese characters, words, and documentary evidence, forming a unique dictionary style.

1、 Galileo: Missionary, Sinologist, Diplomatic Translator

Galileo, born in Turin in 1810, joined the Paris Foreign Missions Church in 1833 and went to Macau, China in 1834 to study Chinese and Korean. In 1838, he attempted to enter mainland China but was unsuccessful, and later engaged in Sinology research and diplomatic activities in Macau. He proposed that Chinese characters are "ideographic characters" and published the "Outline of Character Phonology" in 1841. In the same year, he retired from teaching and returned to secular life, and returned to Macau as a consular translator to participate in negotiations between France and China, leading to the signing of the Huangpu Treaty. I planned to publish a Chinese French dictionary called 'The Complete Book of Chinese', but gave up after completing the first volume. In 1847, he became the Imperial Chinese translator and turned to the field of diplomacy. He is still a lover of natural history and has research on animals, plants, and minerals. He passed away in 1862.

2、 Selection of the Basic Book of Chinese Literature

Discussed the reasons and process why Galileo chose "Peiwen Yunfu" as the base text when compiling the "General Book of Chinese Literature". Peiwen Yunfu "is a collection of materials and encyclopedic reference books, specifically compiling poems, rhymes, and allusions. Galileo believes that "Peiwen Yunfu" can provide rich vocabulary resources for Chinese learning dictionaries, and each entry can be regarded as a "specialized writing on Chinese language studies" centered around rhyme characters. Despite the limitations of "Peiwen Yunfu", Galileo proposed optimization ideas such as annotating words, translating citations, and adding encyclopedia annotations to achieve innovation in dictionary compilation. Through the published sample books and the first volume of the original, it can be seen that the "General Book of Chinese" continues and innovates the style and content of the "Peiwen Yunfu".

3、 Phonetic Symbol Unified Character Inspection Method

Introduced the differences in Chinese character arrangement methods between "Peiwen Yunfu" and "Hanwen Zongshu". The "Peiwen Yunfu" uses four tones and 106 flat water rhyme parts to classify Chinese characters, while the "Hanwen Zongshu" adopts the author's self created "phonetic symbol unified character inspection method". The first volume of the "General Book of Chinese Literature" includes 20 first level phonetic symbols of two paintings and 14 secondary phonetic symbols, sorted according to Jiang Shawei's "Basic Nine Painting Character Checking Method". Chinese characters are first divided into 20 groups based on their first level phonetic symbols, and then sorted twice using Jiang's strokes. The arrangement order of Chinese characters under the same tone symbol is Chinese characters under the first tone symbol+Chinese characters under the second tone symbol. The special entry in the "General Book of Chinese Characters" serves as the beginning of the content for each level of phonetic symbols, providing comprehensive information on phonetic symbols in French and listing the most commonly used Chinese characters. The author believes that phonetic symbols are more beneficial for Western readers to recognize Chinese characters than radical and phonetic symbols, as they have a higher degree of phonetic and semantic correlation and fewer quantities.

4、 Pronunciation and Meaning of Words

Explored the differences in the treatment of pronunciation and meaning between "Peiwen Yunfu" and "Hanwen Zongshu". The "Peiwen Yunfu" starts with rhyme characters and first reverse cuts the phonetic annotations before the meanings of the characters, while the "Hanwen Zongshu" uses a Latin alphabet phonetic system with different tone annotation methods. In terms of Chinese character interpretation, the "General Book of Chinese Literature" adopts an explanatory interpretation method, combining Chinese elements and cultural comparison perspectives, such as the interpretation of characters such as "nine", "ren", and "jie", demonstrating the collision and integration of Chinese and Western ideas and concepts. The author incorporates Chinese characteristics into the explanation of word meanings through detailed annotations, allowing readers to explore Chinese historical civilization while understanding word meanings.

5、 Words and documentary evidence

Explored the classification, arrangement, and use of documentary evidence of words in "Peiwen Yunfu", as well as Galileo's inheritance and development of these words in compiling the "General Book of Chinese Literature". The "Peiwen Yunfu" categorizes words using tags such as "Yunzao", "Zeng", "Duiyu", and "Tiaoju", and performs secondary classification based on word count. Each word is accompanied by documentary evidence, reflecting its origin and use case, and follows the traditional Chinese four part classification system. Galileo selectively included words from "Peiwen Yunfu" in the "General Book of Chinese Literature", deleted some words, and added oral expressions and Catholic terminology. His choice of words is based on whether the meaning conveyed by the target Chinese characters in the words is repeated, and whether the words have depth and language. The word sorting in the "General Book of Chinese" abandons the classification method of ancient books in the base edition and adopts an objective stroke order, which is easier for users to accept. Galileo also undertook the task of explanation, directly providing French meanings as Chinese word definitions, and introducing encyclopedic knowledge of French explanations after specific word definitions to supplement word meanings and highlight Chinese cultural characteristics. In addition, he also cited the original sentence where the word was located in the base text and provided a French translation to assist in the understanding of the word and demonstrate the rationality of its definition. However, the accuracy of Galileo's definition needs to be examined, and there are some issues of misinterpretation. Overall, "Peiwen Yunfu" provides rich Chinese vocabulary and textual evidence for "Hanwen Zongshu", while "Hanwen Zongshu" also extracts, reorganizes, and improves the vocabulary and textual evidence of the original text while inheriting it.

6、 Overview of Chinese Classics "and" Double Letter Numbering "

Galileo innovatively designed a "literature indexing system" in the "General Book of Chinese Literature", which uses the "Chinese Book Overview Table" and "Double Letter Numbering Method" to label the source literature numbers of words in the dictionary, making it convenient for users to search for word origins. The overview table of Chinese literature contains 3026 documentary evidence items, arranged in the order of Jiang's strokes, which downplays the influence of Confucian classics and makes different literary genres and authors' works equally listed. The two letter numbering system uses a combination of uppercase and lowercase French letters and italic forms to number thousands of items for easy indexing. However, the system has shortcomings such as incomplete numbering system, unclear expression of documentary evidence items, and unclear directions, which increase the difficulty for users to explore the etymology. In addition, the end numbering of some words in the main text of the dictionary does not match the original design, resulting in issues such as pointing to non source documentary evidence, inconsistent citation sources and numbering, and incorrect or missing numbering annotations, which affect the user experience.

7、 Conclusion

We discussed how Galileo created an encyclopedic Chinese French dictionary, the "General Book of Chinese" (Volume 1), based on the "Peiwen Yunfu", and used the research results of Chinese characters to construct a unique literature indexing system. He replaced the traditional Confucian literary order with modern scientific classification concepts, combining phonetic symbols, Chinese characters, words, and documentary evidence to construct a Western logical memorization system for users. Galileo values user needs and is guided by efficient literacy and word recognition, reflecting the spirit of humanism. His Chinese teaching philosophy is in line with the modern concept of teaching Chinese as a foreign language. By providing explanations for words, phrases, and citations, plus a comprehensive interpretation of the Chinese Empire, we aim to showcase Chinese civilization to Western readers. The General Book of Chinese is rich in content and broad in scope, which is significantly different from contemporary Chinese foreign dictionaries. Although Galileo inherited the vocabulary, etymology, and classic culture of "Peiwen Yunfu", demonstrating cultural inclusiveness and objective attitude, the first volume of "Hanwen Zongshu" failed to fully realize the creative blueprint, with problems such as disorderly style setting, numerous errors and omissions, and lack of phonetic annotations for words. Galileo's limited understanding of Chinese history and culture, inadequate research on the foundation, and long-term solitary efforts have provided explanations for the shortcomings of the first volume and foreshadowed its inability to gain industry recognition.