Integration with Digital Pali Dictionary lookup for Russian language

I and my good friend @Terloghanto who also publishes Russian translations of suttas had a conversation yesterday, in which he noticed that Pali dictionary lookup is currently missing Russian language. I checked and apparently DPD already have full support for Russian language.

We think it would be greatly beneficial for many Russian Buddhist to have this functionality enabled to reduce friction for switching over DPD and SC. So the question is: could it be done and how can we assist? I have a software engineering background, so I can help with this part as well.

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I don’t make any of the decisions, but from a technical standpoint, I don’t see why not.

If someone wanted to give this a shot it might be a good first project to work on, especially since we already have the English version integrated. I think the English version uses a special subset of the dictionary. Not sure if that has already been generated for the Russian edition.

@Cittadhammo, didn’t you do the current integration of the DPD? Any advice?

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I can see there are 6 target languages here sc-data/dictionaries/simple at main · suttacentral/sc-data · GitHub which does correspond to

I think you can simply add a new folder in that simple folder and test it. (might have to change the UI if it is not automated)

The best source to build the russian equivalent seems to be GitHub - sasanarakkha/dpd-db-sbs: Digital Pāិi Dictionary - SBS and Russian derivation · GitHub

Interestingly GitHub - digitalpalidictionary/dpd-db: Digital Pāិi Dictionary · GitHub does not seems to have russian language which seems to have happened after Moving SBS and Russian data out of the repo · Issue #108 · digitalpalidictionary/dpd-db · GitHub in release Release 2025-05-12 · digitalpalidictionary/dpd-db · GitHub

By cloning the first repo, you can generate a script that will create a json file similar to pli2en_dpd.json, i.e. :

[
  {
    "entry": "ababo",
    "definition": [
      "ababa 3: masc. <b>(comm) part of the Avīci hell where one must stay an ababa-count in duration</b>"
    ]
  },
  {
    "entry": "ababā",
    "definition": [
      "ababa 1: nt. name of a purgatory",
      "ababa 2: nt. 10⁷⁶",
      "ababa 3: masc. <b>(comm) part of the Avīci hell where one must stay an ababa-count in duration</b>"
    ]
  },
  {
    "entry": "abaddhañca",
    "definition": [
      "abaddhaáč + ca",
      "abaddha: pp. <b>not bound; not trapped; unfettered; not imprisoned</b> [na + √badh + ta]"
    ]
  },
  {
    "entry": "abaddhe",
    "definition": [
      "abaddha: pp. <b>not bound; not trapped; unfettered; not imprisoned</b> [na + √badh + ta]"
    ]
  },
  { ...

You can use your ai of choice for that :wink: I use gemini-cli and prompt:

I want to generate a file pli2ru_dpd.json that is similar to PASTE ABOVE but for russian output using this repo. There should be a script somehwere to help do that, can you exploire this repo and do it

After a few minutes, I have a file, but it is not exctly in the good format, also there are output which are in english:

Which is actually the case on the webiste as well:

If you want I can try to create a better file and could push it to SC repo but I don’t have a local build of Suttacentral here at the moment.

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Thank you for such a thorough instruction, bhante! I will try shortly.

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It looks like the DPD browser extension is only English at the moment, but a Russian version will solve your problem too.

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Thank you everyone, I’ve created a pull request to sc-data with generated JSON file.

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@HongDa maybe you could take a look at it, when you have time? :folded_hands:

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I would be happy to make this happen, and I will evaluate it soon.

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Hi @neptunao I have implemented dictionary support for Pali to Russian based on the dictionary information you submitted.

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For reference, corresponding PRs:

Thanks everyone here for their work & support on this! I particularly appreciate it as a Russian speaker with plenty of relatives who don’t know English :slightly_smiling_face:

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Big kudos for @HongDa for integrating it with frontend and everyone else who inspired me and offered support! Now I will try to implement automation on DPD side, so the dictionary updates with each release.

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FYI Russian DPD had published a new version recently, so I created another PR with update: DPD ru update from May 2026 by neptunao · Pull Request #407 · suttacentral/sc-data · GitHub .

I also opened a PR in DPD with automatic pipeline to publish this file as a release artifact: Add Russian SuttaCentral lookup dictionary (pli2ru_dpd) exporter and release pipeline by neptunao · Pull Request #46 · sasanarakkha/dpd-db-sbs · GitHub

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Yes, big merit for you and all who helped, as well as all the folks who have made the Russian DPD. Thanks!

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Thanks to everyone who made this happen! So happy to see this working online.

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