Dehkhoda Encyclopedia of Persian is online!

Dehkhoda Encyclopedia of Persian is finally online. It is a very belated online presence, considering the fact that there is an Iranian government-funded institution called Dehkhoda Encyclopedia Institute whose sole purpose of existence is to make this encyclopedia available to the public.

It is not clear who is behind the online version of Dehkhoda Encyclopedia of Persian at “loghatnaameh.com”. Unlike Steingass’ Persian-English dictionary or Hayyim’s New Persian-English dictionary the people behind this project are completely hidden. On the website there is not any mention of the people who have worked on the project, neither there is any information about their methodology, rules of conversion, and the sources of funding. Even checking the domain name’s Whois does not show any information about the domain’s owner. Interestingly enough, despite all the ambiguities about the site’s owners they have the nerve to ask the visitors to donate to their project. Sure enough, there are also poeple who donate to the site through a free Blogger page with no information about the owner, connected to a Paypal account that does not reveal anything but a free email address.

Personally, I never dare to send money to such a website, but I appreciate their work. They have done something the government-run Dehkhoda Institute should have done years ago.