Why do authoritative Chinese dictionaries tend to include less slangs than their English counterparts?

Question

What are the possible reasons that authoritative Chinese dictionaries tend to include less new slangs or idioms (mainly talking about those that got popular from the 90s to 10s, or even the 20s) than authoritative English ones?

By slangs, I refer to those that managed to stick around and are widely used. By authoritative dictionaries, I refer to ones like 现代汉语词典/辞海/新华字典 vs. Oxford English Dictionary/Webster-Merriam Dictionary/Cambridge Dictionary.

Examples:

1. “细思极恐” was initially internet slangs, but it hacked its way into our real life and is still commonly used. Yet it is not included in authoritative dictionaries. Same for “破防“, “躺平” and so on.

2. 

3. By the way, this is surprising to me as I have never seen any slang originating from a film character in Chinese dictionaries.

Answer 1

The '萌' is actually a borrowed word from Japanese,in Japanese, '萌え(moe)' means cute, so using '萌' to represent cute isn't an official meaning

Answer 2

Your particular example of 萌 is included in the latest version of 现代汉语词典, but this example is not representative of modern slangs.

For cultural reasons most dictionaries lean toward prescriptivism than descriptivism. Thus dictionary editors are usually unwilling to include slangs unless they have gained widespread use. See for example the Douban (China book review website) reviews of 现代汉语词典: https://book.douban.com/subject/26893148/ You can see a lot of criticism against adding in popular usages.

Also Internet slangs tend to fade away extremely fast, while a paper dictionary is intended to last for a long time. The 2009 edition of 辞海 included "斑竹", then a popular slang for BBS moderator, but this word is rarely used today due to the decline of BBS in mainland China.

Answer 3

I think most dictionaries absolutely do contain slang. However its important to keep in mind that bilingual dictionaries still have a target audience of one or the other language.

A dictionary with a target of chinese speakers will likely include english slang, but define it with regular chinese. See example below:

Same thing with dictionaries aimed at an english audience, in reverse, like below:

I do not think you will find any term like GOATed in a dictionary, because it is actually not slang, but an acronym. An acronym specific dictionary would have it but that is less likely to be bilingual.

In the same way I think padawan has not crossed the line into true slang, but is just a pop culture reference. I can confidently say if I had never seen starwars I would have no idea or use of that term. If it crosses that line to be used wildly with no concept of starwars attached, it will be true slang. As is, its less likely to make it into anything bilingual considering even most natives need to look it up.

All this happens in chinese too, not just the english side. Someone would want to go online instead of a traditional dictionary to ask about an acronym like kswl or pop culture reference like 葛優癱

Hope this helps, images from two different pleco dictionaries (◐‿◑)

EDIT: for those who cannot see the photos, the first is an entry aimed at chinese of english slang "iffy". it shows the definition "bad" in english slang with chinese definition of 可疑的；有問題的；有點壞的 as well as slang definition of "uncertain" with chinese definition of 未確定的；有變數的. Note how the english slang is defined with normal chinese not slang equivalents.

the second photo is aimed at english speakers and defines the chinese slang "同志" with the definition "COMMON NAME FOR gay; homosexual" it also gives the regular definition of "comrade".