The bilingual dictionary under review (original) (raw)
Related papers
Bilingual lexicography: Translation dictionaries
International Handbook of Modern Lexis and Lexicography
The present chapter examines the peculiarities of lexicography linking two languages. It addresses the following broad issues: Can bilingual dictionaries legitimately be called translation dictionaries? What language pairs do they normally cover? Who uses them? What are the most persistent problems faced by bilingual lexicography and what time-honored theoretical assumptions are they grounded in? Why is lexicographic equivalence a problematic notion? How is the bilingual dictionary currently changing and what is its future likely to be? The discussion is preceded by a few words of general introduction. *It is common practice in the metalexicographic literature for the two terms to be used interchangeably. There is, however, one notable text in which the equation has been questioned: the 1940 essay by the Russian linguist Lev N. Ščerba (1995). A practicing (Russian-French) lexicographer himself, Ščerba argued that only the L1-L2 dictionary could properly be considered a translation dictionary, whereas the L2-L1 dictionary should rather be called explanatory. His reasoning was that the two perform essentially different functions: translation from the user's native into a foreign language (L1-L2 dictionary) as opposed to explaining the meanings of foreign-language words and expressions (L2-L1 dictionary). When one starts from one's L1, he argued, the meaning to be expressed, encoded in a particular L1 lexical item, is clearly understoodall that is needed is a corresponding L2 item which can express the same meaning. The lexicons of different languages being essentially incommensurable, such an L2 counterpart will usually be no more than an approximation of the L1 unit, but it should suffice for the purposes of basic translation; anyway, under the circumstances, this is the best that can be done.
2012
Terminological equivalence is one of the central issues in translation. To secure equivalence in translations for special purpose languages, the translator has to structure the terms of a given text by reference to a conceptual system and thus identify-independently for both the source and target languages-the conceptual system in which a specific term is embedded. Bilingual and multilingual dictionaries are indispensable tools for any translator. However, due to the importance of the conceptual systems in specialised-language translation, a specialised dictionary has to fulfill higher requirements than general dictionaries. As a matter of fact, a dictionary suitable for specialised-language translation should follow an onomasiological rather than a semasiological approach to lexicography. In this paper, the author studies the basic requirements for a bilingual dictionary that is intended to be of practical use for specialised-language translation, taking a user's perspective when discussing the problem of equivalence between terms in two languages. This is based on selected concepts taken from the field of accounting (IAS/IFRS and national accounting rules) that are translated from German to Spanish and vice versa. While the dictionaries examined are generally well prepared, the study shows that none of them includes information necessary to a translator for ensuring a correct translation. Keywords special-language translation terminological equivalence conceptual system bilingual or multilingual dictionaries onomasiological vs. semasiological approach lexicography accounting IAS/IFRS
Is a bilingual dictionary possible
2002
In this presentation, I reflect on some aspects ofmy practical experience in bilingual lexicography (specifically in the production of general-purpose paper dictionaries) in the light of some of me provocative ideas proposed by the linguist Roy Harris. His rejection of the idea of translation equivalence between languages, however surprising it may appear at first, serves as a useful point of departure in examining a number of persistent problem areas in the practice of bilingual lexicography. Several examples are discussed, indicating the sort of problems which can be encountered even with the apparently unproblematic concrete noun, and, less surprisingly, with slang and vulgar language. The points emerging from this discussion are then related to the use of examples in bilingual dictionaries more generally. In conclusion I argue that Harris's ideas can serve as a useful corrective to the tendency towards "tunnel vision" which may be encouraged by lexicographical prac...
Equivalent relations, context and cotext in bilingual dictionaries
HERMES - Journal of Language and Communication in Business, 2017
Users of bilingual dictionaries often have problems to choose the correct translation equivalent for a given occurrence of the source language form. This could be due to a lack of entries indicating the relevant context and cotext of the translation equivalents. This paper deals with different types of equivalent relations in bilingual dictionaries and the varying need for entries to support the translation equivalents. It is argued that where a relation of semantic divergence prevails the inclusion of context and cotext entries are of extreme importance. The function of a dictionary should determine the nature and extent of the supporting entries. Lexicographers should be well aware of the additional need for context and cotext entries in the treatment of synsemantic words. Consequently they have to negotiate the problems resulting from under addressing, over addressing and zero addressing. It is suggested that procedures of addressing equivalence can help to ensure equivalent disc...
Explaining meaning in bilingual dictionaries
The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography, 144-160
When people consult a dictionary, they most often do so, not in order to check a word's spelling or to learn about its grammatical properties, but because they want to find out what the word means. This is true in particular of bilingual dictionaries whose source language (SL) is a foreign language (L2) for the dictionary user and whose target language (TL) is either the user's native language (L1) or a foreign language better known to them than the dictionary's source language. 1 Such dictionaries are expected to explain the meaning of each SL item, ideally through a target language equivalent.
Equivalence in Bilingual Dictionaries: Types, Problems and Criticism
Scholars International Journal of Linguistics and Literature
This article has set out some of the major issues related to the composition of bilingual dictionaries, namely their functional aspect which helps determining the nature of the intended book, either reception-oriented or production oriented, depending on the type of audience to whom this work is to be presented. After that, the notion of equivalence started taking its position as being the central point of this paper. This latter was gradually reflected. That is to say that the analysis began with word class equivalence, and then it developed to deal with those consisting of two or more words (collocations), to arrive after that to those with longer lexical combinations through relying on different ideas and points of view by theorists descending from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds with different ideas and points of view. Most of them went even further to discuss its subtypes, as called by Heming Yong and Jing Peng, or its degrees as proposed by Monia Bayar 2007. This...
Multilingualism and Dictionaries
COGNITIVE STUDIES | ÉTUDES COGNITIVES, 2015
The Russian-Bulgarian-Polish dictionary that we (Wojciech Sosnowski, Violetta Koseska-Toszewa and Anna Kisiel) are currently developing has no precedent as far as its theoretical foundations and its structure are concerned. The dictionary offers a unique combination of three Slavic languages that belong to three different groups: a West Slavic language (Polish), a South Slavic language (Bulgarian) and an East Slavic language (Russian). The dictionary describes semantic and syntactic equivalents of words between the languages. When completed, the dictionary will contain around 30,000 entries. The principle we build the dictionary on is that every language should be given equal status. Many of our data come from the Parallel Polish-Bulgarian-Russian corpus developed by us as part of the CLARIN-PL initiative. In the print version, the entries come in the order of the Cyrillic alphabet and they are not numbered (except for homonyms, which are disambiguated with Roman numbers). We selected the lemmas for the dictionary on the basis of their frequency in the corpus. Our dictionary is the first dictionary to include forms of address and most recent neologisms in the three languages. Faithful to the recent developments in contrastive linguistics, we begin with a form from the dictionary’s primary language and we define it in Polish. Subsequently, based on this definition, we try to find an equivalent in the second and the third language. Therefore, the meaning comes first and only then we look for the form (i.e. the equivalent) that corresponds to this meaning. This principle, outlined in Gramatyka konfrontatywna języków polskiego i bułgarskiego (GKBP), allows us to treat data from multiple languages as equal. In the dictionary, we draw attention to the correct choice of equivalents in translation; we also provide categorisers that indicate the meaning of verbal tenses and aspects. The definitions of states, events and their different configurations follow those outlined in the net model of verbal tense and aspect. The transitive vs. intransitive categorisers are vital for the languages in question, since they belong to two different types: synthetic (Bulgarian) and analytic (Polish and Russian). We predict that the equal status of every language in the dictionary will facilitate easier and faster development of an electronic version in the future.
Reversing a Bilingual Dictionary: a mixed blessing?
2010
The presentation focuses on the experience of reversing a general Estonian-English dictionary of about 49,000 entries and 93,000 equivalents by means of the Tshwanelex dictionary compilation software. The reversal served two purposes. First, it seemed appropriate to reuse the established cross-linguistic equivalents in the Estonian-English dictionary for the B part of a new English-Estonian dictionary. Second, one also expected to enlarge and improve the reversed Estonian-English dictionary in the course of the post-editing phase. So far the post-editing phase of the English-Estonian dictionary has been highly rewarding. In fact, it could be regarded as simultaneous cross-fertilization of both dictionaries, especially with regard to additional meanings and a more balanced treatment of synonyms. On the other hand, the post-editing phase of a general dictionary has been more time-consuming than expected. It is also argued that, on the one hand, the reversal mercilessly reveals the dra...
The Functional Model of Scientific Bilingual Dictionary
Essays on Lexicon, Lexicography, Terminography in Russian, American and Other Cultures, edited by Olga Karpova and Faina Kartashkova. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007. Pp. 170-183., 2007
Lexicographic term description is being under active discussion among lexicographers, terminologists and scientists in Russia. Fundamental points in scientific-technical lexicography are developed by modern Russian linguists: A.S. Gerd, S.E. Nikitina, S.V. Grinev, U.N. Marchuk, S.D. Shelov, Z.I. Komarova, V.D. Tabanakova and many others. Apart from researches into monolingual dictionaries making principles, there are very few works dealing with the problems of bilingual dictionaries. It is now apparent that bilingual terminography, as well as bilingual lexicography, needs to be comprehended, learned and theoretically interpreted in the theory of lexicography.