SAMUEL Johnson once said lexicographers are “unhappy mortals” and “harmless drudges.” Fudan University Professor Lu Gusun might smile at that description but he prefers to think of himself as a man “caught in the web of words,” borrowing the title of a book written to describe James H.A. Murray, first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Indeed, dictionaries are Lu’s lifelong passion.

The 75-year-old compiler of the award-winning English-Chinese Dictionary will soon add another distinction to his lexicographical credentials with the publication of the first volume of his Chinese-English dictionary.

Dictionaries like this, the professor says, are a bridge to help people understand broad Chinese culture.

Graduating in 1962 from Fudan’s Department of Foreign Languages and Literature, Lu has spent most of his academic life on the campus in Shanghai. It took him 16 years to compile the English-Chinese Dictionary, and another 15 years on the Chinese-English tome.

“In the 1980s, I discovered that in overseas Chinese-language bookstores, more people tended to buy Chinese-English dictionaries than English-Chinese ones,” Lu says. “There were very few choices at the time, and the quality was often open to doubt, with deficiencies and inadequacies.”

Professor Lu is considered one of China’s intellectual heavyweights. In addition to being a lexicographer, he is also a professor of English literature, a Shakespearean scholar, a translator and an interpreter.

Dictionaries, he says, shouldn’t really be judged on presumably pure academic criteria in the light of, say, lexicographic and linguistic studies. Rather, their quality lies primarily in surefire look-ups.

“No matter how scientifically and otherwise well laid out, a dictionary appears to be if people can’t find the word they want, they will lose confidence in the book and soon give it up,” Lu says. “On the other hand, if eight or nine out of 10 words they need are made readily available, a reader will feel satisfied, and the compiler’s efforts will be rewarded.”

The new Chinese-English Dictionary will include more than 300,000 entries, outnumbering the 240,000 of the largest work of its kind now available on the market.

Lu remains a rather humble man despite all the accolades heaped on him. He describes his way of life as simple. A man always surrounded by piles of books. An inspiring mentor to students.

A few years ago during a lecture, a student asked Lu about his secret of success and challenged him if he could answer the question in no more than 10 English words.

“The secret of success is indifference to success,” Lu replied unthinkingly in no time.

Last year, Lu suffered a stroke that landed him in hospital. But as soon as he was discharged, he went back to his rigorous work schedule.

Words to describe this wordsmith invariably fall short. He’s not the stereotypical fusty and fogey old professor cloistered away in an ivory tower. In fact, he is an often outspoken blogger and social commentator, as well as a soccer fan and gourmet.

Chinese is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s more complicated languages. One Chinese character combined with another can create many words with totally different meanings. Also, the Chinese language has multiple nuances, depending on whether it is used in dialects, whether it stems from ancient or modern times as variants, or whether it is written in simplified or full-form classic Chinese characters.

“I want words in this dictionary to be as diversified as possible,” Lu says. “The dictionary will cover not only the common core of the vocabulary, but also words worthy of recording in the long history of the Chinese language.”

Pan Wenguo, a linguist at East China Normal University, once joked that the purchase of Lu’s dictionary would be equal to buying eight separate dictionaries — modern Chinese, ancient Chinese, idioms, an encyclopedia, dialects, new words, global Chinese and Chinese borrowed from foreign languages.

The content spans almost all aspects of life, ranging from the arts, sciences all the way to day-to-day cyberspeak and childrenese. Its scope is breathtaking and its mechanics ingenious.

For example, take the character 半 (ban), meaning “half” or “semi.” Lu’s dictionary lists more than 300 compound words and idiomatic expressions.

There are idioms like 半生不熟 (ban sheng bu shu), which is explained in three levels of meanings: “half cooked,” “half digested” and “not skillful.” Each meaning includes examples to illustrate the different uses.

There are also very colloquial phrases such as 半边天 (ban bian tian), which means “half the sky,” but can also refer to women, harking back to the late Chairman Mao Zedong’s famous statement that “women hold up half of the sky.”

The vernacular phrase 半吊子 (ban diao zi) is another example. In ancient times, it used to mean “half a string of coins,” with one string equaling about 1,000 units of cash. But today, the phrase usually refers to people who are crude, rash, unwise or impulsive. If you want to say someone has a “half-baked” knowledge of English, you can use 半吊子英语 (ban diao zi yingyu), which is genuinely colloquial Chinese.

If all this seems complicated, that’s the point. Comprehension can arise from diverse information.

“Compiling a Chinese-English dictionary is much more difficult than one does it the other way around,” says Huang Yuanshen, a retired English professor at East China Normal University. “Professor Lu is trying to be all-inclusive and all-embracing, making his dictionary cover everything from aardvarks to zebras.”

Indeed, the dictionary aims at serving as an ambassador for people who want to learn more about Chinese culture in the broadest possible terms. It seeks to connect people with some lost Chinese traditions. For example, 暗九 (an jiu), or “convert nine,” refers to the ancient custom of people burning incense in a temple at an age which is a multiple of nine to avert bad luck.

The dictionary also offers different ways of expression from around China that all mean the same thing. Software, for example, is 软件 (ruanjian) on the mainland but 软体 (ruanti) in Taiwan.

Lu calls his method of compilation “descriptivism with a grain of salt.” He says he is not a “whateverist.” The entries, hopefully, will stand the test of time. Lu follows the same strict procedures as he compiled the English-Chinese Dictionary. Some Chinese characters have their perfect equivalent in English, such as 杀猪般叫起来 (sha zhu ban jiao qilai), or “squealing like a stuck pig.” But equivalence is out of the question with many others.

“For Chinese without an agreed-upon translation, I tried to convey the flavor of the original Chinese while observing existing expressions in English,” Lu says.

For example, the Chinese slangy expression 吹胡子瞪眼睛 (chui huzi deng yanjing) refers to a person who snorts and stares in anger, is expressed through the English phrase “with foaming ire.” And for 一地鸡毛 (yidi jimao), which literally means “a floor littered with chicken feathers,” the dictionary offers definitions such as “a confusion of trivialities” and “bothersome day-to-day life, then extends the meanings such as “a can of worms” and “omni-shambles of a situation.”

“Translation is not a point-to-point journey,” Lu says. “It is a flight over cultural barriers, landing at a destination closest in cultural terrain to the starting point.”

For words with new connotations or translations, Lu carefully waits to assess their evolution. The popular phrase 给力 (geili), which the young Chinese use to describe something that is “stimulating” or “cool,” is sometimes translated into English with the Internet buzzword “geilivable.” But Lu’s dictionary does not accept this new word because it is not yet standard and sort of taking liberties with both languages.

Lu does not reject tasteful fun. For example, the dictionary includes this example: “They buy things they don’t want with money they don’t have to impress the people they don’t know.”

Lu follows an illustrious line of people who have tried to compile dictionaries cross-referencing Chinese and English. Protestant missionary Robert Morrison compiled the world’s first Chinese-English dictionary in the early 19th century, and Chinese literary lions Liang Shih-chiu and Lin Yutang each produced versions of dictionaries.

“This year marks the 200th anniversary of the publication of Morrison’s Chinese-English dictionary, a milestone in history,” Lu says. “My dictionary is a kind of salute to Morrison, who had strong beliefs and represents a spirit of sacrifice that I admire.”