Issues in compiling bilingual dictionaries

Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak

[A] 1. Preliminary considerations

Many decisions taken during the compilation of bilingual dictionaries are essentially identical to

those encountered in the preparation of monolingual ones. Consequently, whether the dictionary is

to be organised alphabetically or thematically, published in print or electronically, available online

for a fee or free of charge, are all questions that will only be mentioned in passing, the main focus

of this chapter being on topics specific to the bilingual dictionary genre.

The issues that arise in the process of making a bilingual dictionary follow, in the main, from

what kind of dictionary it is to be. The coverage (i.e. the number and type of items to be included)

and the resulting physical size of the publication need to be decided upon, as does the depth of

individual entries, that is, the amount of information offered about a single headword. At the bottom

of it all lies the most basic consideration: the target audience, a factor which has a direct bearing on

such aspects as the dictionary’s scope and directionality.

[B] 1.1. Target audience, scope, and directionality

Thanks to the fact that one of the languages dealt with in a bilingual dictionary is always known to

its users, the dictionary’s audience can be immensely varied, ranging from complete beginners to

very advanced students of the other language. What any particular user wants from their dictionary

may, of course, vary: some people will treat it as a language learning aid, while others – travellers,

tourists – may have no interest at all in mastering the foreign language. For the latter, the dictionary

can be anything from an essential tool, ensuring survival in a foreign environment, to an optional

extra used – in addition to, or instead of, a phrase book – as a gesture of politeness towards the

inhabitants of the place they are visiting.

It is customary to view bilingual dictionary users in terms of the two parties they naturally

fall into: one native speaker group for each of the two languages of a particular dictionary. This

simple dichotomy glosses over those instances when neither of the dictionary’s object languages is a

given user’s native tongue (L1). For speakers of lesser-used languages, there is often no bilingual

dictionary available which would cover the foreign language they are interested in combined with

their native language. They then have to settle for second best: an L3-L2 dictionary, where L3 is the

foreign language they want and L2 is another foreign language, one they have mastered sufficiently

well to be able to use it as an intermediary. Sadly, the needs of such users are not taken into

consideration in the preparation of bilingual dictionaries, nor is it clear how they could be.

Another special case are dictionaries of languages which no longer have any native

speakers. A bilingual dictionary of Sanskrit, for instance, will typically feature only one part, with

Sanskrit as the source language (SL) and a modern language, such as English, as the target language

(TL). Such dictionaries, used mainly by scholars, frequently rely on descriptive explanations of

meaning rather than TL equivalents. This is because many headwords are so deeply embedded in

the ancient SL culture that translating them by means of single TL words is not possible.

Whether dealing with a dead or a living language, dictionaries with only one part (Lx-Ly)

are called monoscopal (Hausmann and Werner 1991). Some monoscopal dictionaries are

additionally equipped with an Ly-Lx index, meant as a partial substitute for a proper Ly-Lx part in

that it allows Ly-speaking users access into the Lx-Ly section via their native language. Most

currently produced bilingual dictionaries are biscopal (Lx-Ly and Ly-Lx), that is, consist of two

fully-fledged word lists, each item in each list being accompanied by one or more equivalents in the

other language.

The exact contents of a biscopal dictionary for a given pair of languages may vary

considerably depending on the dictionary’s directionality. A so-called bidirectional dictionary

(Hausmann and Werner 1991) is designed with native speakers of both Lx and Ly in mind, while a

monodirectional one is meant for an audience consisting exclusively of speakers of either Lx or Ly.

The majority of contemporary bilingual dictionaries either are or claim to be bidirectional. The

motivation is largely commercial: it is cheaper to produce one dictionary which will be sold in both

markets than invest in two different ones.

Considered from the perspective of any single user, this is far from ideal. The necessity of

addressing two language communities at once results, especially in print dictionaries, in a situation

when some of the information supplied is superfluous from the point of view of one of the user

groups. Thus, speakers of German do not need to be told what the gender of each German noun is

or that a given German expression is very formal. The space occupied by such redundant

information could be put to better use if the needs of only one language community – in this

instance, that of German speakers – were being catered for. When compiling a monodirectional

dictionary, by contrast, lexicographers do not have to constantly switch perspective from one user

group to the other: they can maintain a consistent focus on that of the dictionary’s languages which

is its intended users’ L2.1 This seems to be reason enough for demanding that, whenever possible,

bilingual dictionaries should be monodirectional.

Matters are additionally complicated by the fact that, more often than not, one of the two

languages of a bilingual dictionary is less widely spoken and less often learnt than the other. As a

result, what publishers advertise as a dictionary equally useful to both language communities may,

upon closer inspection, prove to be heavily biased towards the needs of the community speaking the

less popular language. Such a dictionary is only superficially bidirectional, e.g., by virtue of giving

grammatical information about headwords in both the Lx-Ly and Ly-Lx section and/or using both

Lx and Ly as the metalanguage. Where semantic description is concerned, it cannot help but

privilege one of the user groups (see, e.g., Atkins 1985: 15). Most bilingual dictionaries with

English which are produced in non-anglophone countries fit the above description: in spite of the

promises on their back covers, they are directed primarily at speakers of the local language, who are

likely to predominate among the users.

The good news is that the number of monodirectional dictionaries published worldwide has

been growing steadily in recent years. This is especially visible in the area of pedagogical

lexicography, i.e. among dictionaries geared specifically to the needs of less-than-advanced foreign

language learners.2 Even so, it must be remembered that the coverage of such dictionaries is, as a

rule, less comprehensive than that of large, academic reference works, which are still predominantly

bidirectional.

[B] 1.2. Function, organisation, medium of presentation

A dictionary’s target audience, scope, and directionality are intimately connected with its functions.

Two main functions of bilingual dictionaries have been recognised: the receptive (passive,

decoding) and the productive (active, encoding) one. Traditionally, the emphasis has been on

reception. This is hardly surprising, since, for any language pair we care to examine, dictionaries

going from L2 to L1 will turn out to be used more readily (and, consequently, to have had a longer

history) than those going in the opposite direction. The reasons seem obvious. When a person wants

to understand something written or spoken in a foreign language, and there is no-one to help them

with the task, they have little choice but to turn to a bilingual dictionary. By contrast, when someone

wants to express themselves in a foreign language, they may choose to rely on their existing verbal

repertoire, thus forgoing dictionary consultation. Besides, the benefits of consulting a dictionary for

decoding tend to be rather more immediate and more obvious than its effects on the user’s

production.

Despite this traditional dominance of reception, much more attention is being paid to the

productive function in 21st-century bilingual lexicography than used to be the case a mere few

decades ago. This is a welcome development, since it is precisely in this area that (biscopal)

bilingual dictionaries hold an undisputable advantage over monolingual ones: thanks to being

equipped with an L1-L2 part, they enable users to access L2 lexical resources through what those

users already know, i.e. through the lexical items of their L1. Even the most production-oriented

monolingual learner’s dictionary cannot compete with that.3

The organisation of bilingual dictionaries is predominantly semasiological, i.e. based on the

headword’s (written) form. Accordingly, for languages with alphabetical writing systems, the

arrangement of entries follows the order of the alphabet. Each entry is organised around a particular

lexical item (the headword), providing the meanings (senses) which that lexical item can express.

This is the kind of reference work one normally has in mind when talking about bilingual

dictionaries.

In the much rarer onomasiological (thematic, ideological) bilingual dictionaries, the word

list is arranged according to topics, and each entry is built around a concept, listing the lexical items

through which that concept can be expressed. Onomasiological dictionaries are usually monoscopal

and cover only a limited subset of the SL lexicon, such as the vocabulary specific to a particular

domain of knowledge. They are also primarily concerned with the headwords’ semantics, to the

exclusion of aspects such as grammar or pronunciation. There is a certain parallel between an

onomasiological dictionary, whether mono- or bilingual, and a semasiological L1-L2 bilingual

dictionary: both start from the familiar (respectively, a general concept and a word in the user’s

native language) and proceed towards the less familiar (a specific word the user wants, but either

cannot recall or does not know), thus serving primarily an encoding function.

Depending on the medium of presentation, bilingual dictionaries are divided into paper

(print) and electronic ones. As the properties of electronic dictionaries are discussed in detail in

Chapters 5.1. and 5.3., the present contribution deals mainly with medium-independent features.

Otherwise, in the absence of indications to the contrary, when talking about a bilingual dictionary

we mean a printed book.

[A] 2. Compilation

[B] 2.1. Human resources

Whether a dictionary succeeds in meeting the expectations of its target users depends, to a large

extent, on the skill of the lexicographer(s) who have compiled it. Most quality bilingual dictionaries

are prepared by teams of people rather than single-handedly. When perfect bilinguals are not

available (which is in most cases), the minimum requirement is that the prospective lexicographer

should be a native speaker of one of the dictionary’s languages and have a near-native command of

the other. Some project managers insist that the lexicographers and editors working on a

dictionary’s Lx-Ly section should be native speakers of Ly (and vice versa), the assumption being

that TL equivalents are easier to come by when one is translating into, rather than from, one’s native

language. As might be expected, it is not always possible to fulfil this last requirement, either.

One variable that is impossible to control are a candidate’s predispositions for the job. Like

with translating skills, a person’s talent for lexicography often has little to do with whether they

hold a degree in linguistics or another language-related discipline (although being a trained linguist

obviously cannot hurt). The most desirable qualification, i.e. a degree in lexicography, is not a

realistic expectation, since few academic institutions offer courses in lexicography (see Chapter 6),

and those that do rarely teach actual dictionary making. This being so, the best indicator of a

candidate’s suitability for the job is how well they can execute the sample lexicographic tasks they

have been assigned in the course of their preparatory training (which is a necessary stage preceding

any respectable dictionary project).

[B] 2.2. Data sources and methods

Whatever the exact procedure followed in the compilation of a bilingual dictionary, it is certain that

existing dictionaries (bilingual Lx-Ly and Ly-Lx ones, as well as monolingual ones of both Lx and

Ly) will be consulted in the process. For many cheap, low-quality dictionaries, prior publications

are the only source of material complementing the authors’ introspection.

Many specialists believe that a modern dictionary worthy of the name cannot be prepared

without a suitably large, electronically stored language corpus. Corpora provide evidence for SL

meanings and for the frequency of occurrence of lexical items. They also help identify common

syntactic patterns and recurring phraseological combinations, so that lexicographers can tap them

for illustrations of various aspects of language use, which are then presented in the dictionary in the

form of example sentences. In sum, it is on the basis of corpus data that representative, up-to-date

word lists can be drawn up and the use of headwords illustrated, thereby ensuring that nothing of

importance has been overlooked.

All of the above is fairly uncontroversial. Exactly what kind of corpus is required for

making a bilingual dictionary is slightly less so. Ideally, two representative, well-balanced corpora

should be available, one for each of the source languages of a biscopal dictionary. Access to a

parallel corpus (i.e. a corpus of SL texts and their translations) and/or to comparable monolingual

corpora (i.e. corpora containing texts of the same type, coming from the same period, and dealing

with the same kind of topic) would be an additional bonus. There seems to be universal agreement

that such closely matched corpora could be of great help in tracking down equivalent candidates for

particularly obstinate headwords.

Disappointingly, no bilingual dictionaries are known to have been compiled exclusively on

the basis of either parallel or comparable corpora.4 Apart from the obvious obstacle (i.e.

unavailability of the right kind of corpus), the main problem seems to be the enormous amount of

time required to analyse the wealth of corpus data in a satisfactory way (Atkins 2008 (2002): 258f.).

A bilingual corpus offers too many equivalence candidates, each of which might seem important to

the lexicographer at some point, with the likely result that a dictionary compiled in this way would

contain ‘too much detail for most users’ and might end up being ‘too big to appear in print’ (Atkins

and Rundell 2008: 478). In principle, of course, these difficulties could be resolved if enough time –

and, consequently, money – were to be devoted to editing the preliminary version of the dictionary,

allowing the lexicographers to scrutinise equivalence candidates carefully and, ultimately, trim all

oversize entries. Meanwhile, as a sort of half-measure, corpus data are sometimes incorporated into

the electronic versions of bilingual dictionaries (e.g. the CD-ROMs or DVDs accompanying the

printed books) in an attempt to offer additional assistance to more advanced users, especially

translators and professional linguists.

Depending on corpus availability, but also on the time, money, and human resources

allocated to a particular project, the actual compilation of a bilingual dictionary may follow

different paths. As already indicated, ideally, the lexicographers should have at their disposal two

linguistically pre-analysed corpora (databases), one for each of the source languages of the

dictionary. As yet, this is hardly ever the case. Instead, for dictionaries whose SL is a well-described

language Lx, a frequently taken route is to start from an ‘universal’ Lx database built from the

resources of an Lx corpus. The database is universal in the sense that it can serve as a blueprint for a

bilingual dictionary from Lx into any other language. It is made up of a list of Lx headwords, each

complete with the relevant grammatical information, preliminary sense divisions, and definitions of

the distinguished senses; example sentences are sometimes provided as well. Such a pre-constructed

framework is passed on to a team of TL lexicographer-translators, whose main task is to fill the

empty slots, in other words, to supply TL equivalents for all the senses identified for the SL

headwords. Subject to the chief editor’s approval, TL lexicographers may be allowed to modify the

initial framework to varying extents in order to make it fit the target language better; this is

achieved mainly by splitting and lumping senses (see Chapter 4.9.).

What happens with the Ly-Lx part of the dictionary depends on the resources available for

Ly. The procedure may either be fully analogous (i.e. Ly-corpus-based) or, in the absence of an Ly

corpus, it may involve working with several monolingual dictionaries of Ly and/or using the results

of an automatic reversal of the Lx-Ly part (provided the two parts are not compiled simultaneously).

There are also cases when a bilingual dictionary is created through a bilingualisation of an

existing monolingual dictionary. Although seemingly a simpler task, it may actually require more

skill and effort to turn a fully-fledged monoligual dictionary into a bilingual one than to fashion a

bilingual dictionary from a semi-finished product, i.e. a database of the kind discussed above.

Again, depending on the project, different degrees of intervention in the original macro- and

microstructure may be allowed.5

For the sake of completeness, it ought to be mentioned that somewhere between a

monoligual dictionary and a bilingual dictionary created on its basis lies an intermediate genre: a

bilingualised (semi-bilingual) dictionary, i.e. one that offers TL equivalents while retaining the SL

definitions from the monolingual dictionary on which it has been founded. Such dictionaries are

always monodirectional and monoscopal (L2-L1), with only an L1-L2 index in place of a regular

L1-L2 section.

[A] 3. Megastructure

The overall structure of a dictionary (its megastructure) comprises the central word list

(macrostructure) and the outer texts (outside matter).

[B] 3.1. Word lists

In a biscopal dictionary, of course, we have not one word list but two. The main criterion for

inclusion in either of them is a given item’s frequency of occurrence, but other factors play a role as

well. In the language-learning context, that is, in pedagogical bilingual dictionaries, potential

usefulness for learners – which does not always coincide with corpus frequency – must be taken

into account. Thus, vocabulary items connected with the language classroom, complying with

examination requirements, and correlated with the interests of the target age group (e.g.

schoolchildren or young adults) have a fair chance of being included.

Another reason why the word lists cannot simply be determined by corpus frequency is that

this would automatically disqualify older words, which are either extremely rare in, or altogether

absent from, corpora of contemporary language. Although most bilingual dictionaries are

synchronic contemporary dictionaries (Svensén 2009: 23), a comprehensive dictionary of the

general language must also include some obsolescent or even completely obsolete words, in order

to meet the expectations of those users whose proficiency allows them to read older literature in the

foreign language. Since such users will need information about those words for decoding purposes

only, it follows that, in a monodirectional dictionary, older vocabulary items will feature mainly, if

not exclusively, as headwords in the L2-L1 part. By the same logic, in a bidirectional dictionary,

where each of the parts acts as an L2-L1 resource for one of the user groups, both word lists should

include important old words.

What about the other end of the time spectrum, that is, neologisms? On the whole, lexical

items which have not yet become institutionalised do not feature in dictionaries of any sort (except,

naturally, dictionaries of neologisms). Indeed, lack of a dictionary record is one of the main criteria

for deciding that a particular item is still at the neologism stage. It is all the more remarkable that,

occasionally, there may be more justification for admitting a neologism into a bilingual Lx-Ly

dictionary than into a monolingual dictionary of Ly. What we have in mind are cases when no Ly

equivalent can be found for a particular Lx headword and when, additionally, there is reason to

believe that the Lx word will eventually be borrowed into Ly (the tell-tale signs being its

attestations in informal Ly speech and/or in Ly content on the internet). Under such circumstances, a

bilingual lexicographer may decide to sanction the incipient borrowing by listing it among the

proposed Ly equivalents of the Lx headword. The only chance for a neologism to feature in a

bilingual dictionary is thus as a tentative TL equivalent in the Lx-Ly part rather than as a headword

in either Lx-Ly or Ly-Lx.

Finally, not only single words, but increasingly also multiword units can be headwords in

bilingual dictionaries. This is a result of the growing realisation that units of meaning are not always

co-extensive with orthographic words, ample evidence for which comes, among others, from the

study of language corpora. From the users’ point of view, one of the benefits of multiword units

being elevated to the status of independent headwords is that they are easier to locate than when

nested inside entries.

[B] 3.2. Outer texts

Outer texts are additions situated outside the A-Z core of the dictionary, either on the peripheries of

the dictionary proper (front and back matter) or as inserts – plates of drawings, diagrams, etc –

interspersed among the entries (middle matter). Until quite recently, neither dictionary makers nor

theoretical lexicographers used to pay much attention to those optional sections, arguing that very

few users ever consulted them.6 While doubtless true, it is hard to say whether the latter is solely the

cause of the lexicographers’ neglect or also one of its effects. What is certain is that outer texts often

give the impression of an afterthought, carrying material which is relatively easy to get hold of, very

likely added at the last minute and without much consideration to what the dictionary audience

might really need.

Fortunately, things are beginning to look up. In good dictionaries, the A-Z text is now

routinely preceded by a ‘How to use the dictionary’ section. Also present is a list of abbreviations,

including grammatical codes, phonetic symbols, usage labels, and the like. A grammar section –

with a list of noun declensions and/or verb conjugations, irregular verbs, and similar – is a frequent

feature. Occasionally, one can find some or all of the following: a selection of false friends, a

writing guide, a bank of common phrases used in everyday conversation, a list of popular texting

and e-mailing abbreviations (and their TL equivalents). In learners’ dictionaries, there is often a

special section devoted to aspects of the L2 culture. Lists of geographical and personal (given)

names, once quite common, are less frequent these days, partly because important place names tend

to feature as headwords in the A-Z part.

In print dictionaries, the choice of elements as well as the amount of information to be

included in the outside matter is heavily circumscribed by space considerations. In the case of

discursive sections, such as those on culture or essay writing, the language of presentation has to be

decided upon, as lexicographers can rarely afford the luxury of two language versions. Ideally, of

course, any text in L2 should be accompanied by its L1 translation, thus allowing users to choose

the version they fell more comfortable with – an easy thing to do in an electronic dictionary.

In sum, if a dictionary’s outer texts are to be of real use to the language learner, a lot of

thought has to go into their preparation. It may be a good idea to enlist the help of other specialists –

language teachers, grammarians, phoneticians – or even entirely delegate the task to them. All of the

lexicographers’ time and effort can then be spent on their main job: identifying TL equivalents and

presenting them in the most effective and efficient way.

[A] 4. Microstructure

The microstructure, that is, the structure of a single entry, can be quite complex in a modern

dictionary, with many constituent elements following one another in a set order, each conveying

different kinds of information. Here, only two types of entry constituent will be dealt with:

equivalents and examples of usage.

[B] 4.1. Equivalents

The one indispensable element of the microstructure of a bilingual dictionary is the headword with

its translations (known in lexicography as TL equivalents). Both the identification of suitable TL

equivalents and their clear presentation are crucial to the dictionary’s success.

[C] 4.1.1. Equivalent provision

The principal idea of a bilingual dictionary is deceptively simple: to provide equivalents for all

senses of all headwords, such that each equivalent is identical in meaning to the sense it has been

matched with.7 Unfortunately, the execution of this idea is, in most cases, extremely difficult and, at

times, utterly impossible. Three properties of natural languages – two intra- and one interlingual –

are responsible for that: vagueness of meaning, polysemy, and lack of one-to-one correspondence

between different lexical systems (i.e. so-called anisomorphism8 ).

Both vagueness and polysemy carry substantial benefits for language users, making it

possible to express an infinitude of meanings with the help of limited lexical resources. The same

cannot be said about their implications for lexicography. Semantic vagueness (indeterminacy)

significantly complicates the process of identifying the meanings of (decontextualised) lexical items

within each language. Until such identification has been accomplished, one cannot even begin to try

and match meanings interlingually for the purposes of a bilingual dictionary.

Besides, it is not always clear – not only to lexicographers, but also to lexical semanticists –

whether a particular lexical item is best viewed as vague or as polysemous, that is, whether it should

be thought of as having one general, underspecified meaning or several more or less distinct,

independent meanings.9 Opting for the latter, i.e. for polysemy, brings with it the need for careful

sense division of SL headwords (see Chapter 4.9.) as well as for meticulous discrimination and

disambiguation of TL equivalents (see sections 4.1.2. and 4.1.3. of the present chapter).

There is also a connection between polysemy and anisomorphism: the rarity of interlingually

symmetrical polysemy (i.e. of cases where two polysemous words in two different languages have

the same number of exactly the same senses) can be viewed as one of the facets of anisomorphism.

To illustrate this issue in a condensed form, let us consider The Sense of an Ending, the title of a

novel by Julian Barnes. Individually, both sense and ending are polysemous; combined as above,

they not only do not disambiguate each other, but intensify the ambiguity of the resulting phrase. At

least three readings of the phrase seem possible here: ‘the feeling that an end is approaching’; ‘the

meaning of a book’s ending’; ‘the meaning of a life’s ending’10. Indeed, it is possible to read the title

at a more general level, with all three interpretations being ‘turned on’ at once (the overall effect

thus amounting to vagueness rather than polysemy). When it comes to translation, there is,

naturally, little chance of preserving the multi-layered ambiguity – or vagueness, as the case may be

– unless the items proposed as TL equivalents of the two English nouns exhibit polysemy parallel

(at least in the relevant senses) to that of, respectively, sense and ending.11

In general, anisomorphism – a consequence of the fact that different languages structure

reality differently – means that perfect interlingual equivalence is an exception rather than the rule.

Consequently, if bilingual dictionaries are to be viable at all, the sameness-of-meaning requirement

must be relaxed, in recognition of the graded, rather than absolute, nature of interlingual

correspondences. A great deal of ingenuity and effort on the part of the lexicographer may be

required before even a limited degree of equivalence between the headword and its dictionary TL

counterpart can be reached.12

One of the means of achieving correspondence is to extend the scope of the unit to be

translated, in accordance with the principle that, when there is no equivalence at word level, it can

still be reached at the level of the entire message. Sometimes, it may be necessary to embed the

untranslatable SL lexical item in a sentence (and then translate the lot); at other times, adding some

minimal context (e.g. a modifier) and translating the resulting phrase will do the trick.

It would, however, be wrong to conclude that it is always easier to provide equivalents for

SL stretches larger than a single word. In particular, conventional multiword lexical units, especially

figurative ones, bring challenges of their own. On top of the difficulties which follow from lack of

isomorphism, the extra complication here is that the meaning of a figurative expression is often to

some extent motivated (transparent). The motivating link between the actual (that is, figurative)

meaning of an expression (such as an idiom or a proverb) and its lexical structure resides in the so-

called image component,13 i.e. the mental picture the expression evokes in the language user.

Strictly speaking, a perfect TL equivalent of a conventional figurative expression should therefore

correspond to it on both planes: that of the actual meaning and that of the rich image. What usually

happens is that correspondence is present only on one of the planes, if that. If two expressions are

identical exclusively on the level of the image, then, of course, they do not qualify as equivalent at

all; rather, they are phraseological false friends. There is no agreement as to how to treat two

expressions which do mean the same, but are based on markedly different images. Most authors

(including practising lexicographers) will accept them as fully equivalent, but some (e.g.

Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen 2005) will insist, in accordance with the reasoning presented above,

that their equivalence is only partial.

Consider the pair of proverbs which Duval (2008: 280) cites as an example of full

equivalence: English once bitten twice shy and French chat échaudé craint l’eau froide. Despite

their identical figurative meaning, the two are not always substitutable in translation: one cannot be

used in place of the other if, for whatever reason, the literal meaning – either that of having being

bitten or that of having been scalded – gets activated, e.g.:

Once bitten (by Godzilla), twice shy.

Unfortunetely, the nation is not “once bitten, twice shy.” More like multiple bites...14

Of course, bilingual lexicographers could count themsleves lucky if all their problems with

matching phraseological units were of this kind, the sole question being whether the equivalence

works in all contexts or only in some. Most of the time they deal with correspondences which are

much more tenuous than in the case just quoted, and sometimes the target language has no fixed

expression at all which would make a passable equivalent candidate. In such cases, it is better to

give a discursive explanation of the SL meaning in the target language than to propose as an

equivalent a TL expression which exhibits significant differences (whether semantic, syntactic, or

pragmatic) when compared with the headword, thereby potentially misleading the user.

[C] 4.1.2. Equivalent discrimination

Early bilingual dictionaries did not discriminate between equivalents at all, listing them one after

another, separated only by commas. Later, in slightly more ambitious publications, a distinction was

introduced between a comma, separating supposedly interchangeable equivalents, and a semicolon,

separating equivalents which were not fully interchangeable. There are still quite a few dictionaries

which continue this tradition. That it is not a tradition worth continuing shoud be obvious from the

paucity of cases when a SL headword (or a sense thereof) can be supplied with even a single perfect

TL equivalent. To assume that there are more perfect equivalents per headword (sense), and that

they are all fully interchangeable, flies in the face of what we know about interlingual

anisomorphism, on the one hand, and about the rarity of absolute synonyms within one language, on

the other.

In a bilingual L2-L1 dictionary meant to serve reception only, such indiscriminate

accumulation of equivalents, while hardly ideal, might perhaps be defended. When the dictionary’s

target language is the users’ L1, we can, arguably, expect them to be able to pick the appropriate

equivalent from among those provided. However, in a dictionary which also aims to take care of the

users’ productive needs, lack of equivalent discrimination is bound to have disastrous consequences.

Left to their own devices, some users will inevitably make some wrong choices, producing

utterances which are, at best, stylistically inappropriate and, at worst, downright incomprehensible

or ridiculous. Or simply not what they wanted to say.

Guiding the user to the equivalent they need involves making a number of decisions: what

kind of information should be given to identify the equivalent; in which of the two languages it

should be phrased; what non-verbal signs (numbers, punctuation marks, icons) should be employed

for the purpose. The information made use of in equivalent discrimination can be semantic (e.g. a

synonym, hyperonym, or collocate), syntactic (e.g. an indication of part of speech, transitivity, or

type of subject taken by the verb), or pragmatic (e.g. style, domain, regional, or temporal label). The

choice of typography is largely a question of aesthetics; what matters is that the signs should be

distinct enough and not too numerous or difficult to interpret.

The metalanguage in a monodirectional dictionary will, naturally, be the native language of

the users. Unfortunately, the policy cannot be consistently applied in bidirectional dictionaries, and

this necessarily puts one of the user groups at a disadvantage. The next best thing would be to give

all information in both languages – not a viable proposition in a printed book, whose entries would

swell in size and become impossibly hard to navigate, but easily doable in electronic reference

works, in which the choice of the metalanguage can be left in the hands of the user. The entry

quoted below demonstrates how a bidirectional dictionary with English and German (OGD)

attempts to solve the problem by alternating the metalanguage (in this instance, preceding the

German equivalent by an English synonym of the headword in the appropriate sense or subsense

and following it with two or three German collocates):

handsome

1. (good-looking) gut aussehend [Mann, Frau]; schön, edel [Tier, Möbel, Vase usw.]

2. (generous) großzügig [Geschenk, Belohnung, Mitgift]; nobel [Behandlung, Verhalten, Empfang];

(considerable) stattlich, ansehnlich [Vermögen, Summe, Preis]; stolz [Preis, Summe]15

[C] 4.1.3. Equivalent disambiguation

Whenever the lexical item offered as a TL lexicographic equivalent is ambiguous (whether due to

polysemy, homonymy, or vagueness), information should be provided enabling the user to home in

on the sense in which the equivalent is to be interpreted. This is especially important in L2-L1

dictionaries; in L1-L2 ones, the problem should not arise, thanks to the user’s familiarity with the

meaning of the (native) headword. Often, the same methods which serve the purposes of sense

and/or equivalent discrimination simultaneously resolve equivalent ambiguity. Thus, grammar

codes, usage labels, and guide phrases containing different kinds of clues (synonyms, collocates,

etc) can all be effective disambiguating devices. In addition, if two or more near-synonymous

equivalents are given side by side, they often automatically disambiguate each other, their semantic

‘common part’ indicating the relevant sense. If all else fails, the lexicographer can furnish the

equivalent with a gloss, as in this entry from a Russian-English dictionary (CORD):

интерпретáтор interpreter (expounder),

where the gloss deactivates the ‘oral translator’ reading of the equivalent.

[B] 4.2. Examples

Unlike equivalents, without which a bilingual dictionary is simply impossible, examples of usage

are not an obligatory element of the microstructure. Nonetheless, they can be found more and more

often these days, especially in bilingual dictionaries geared specifically to the needs of language

learners. Once the decision has been made to include this feature, a number of questions have to be

answered, such as whether the examples are better invented by the lexicographer or extracted from

a corpus (and, if corpus-based, to what extent they can be modified) and whether or not they should

be translated.

In dictionaries for beginners and/or young schoolchildren, where the examples need to be

simple and short, and where, consequently, the authenticity of the illustrative material is less

important than its attunement to the users’ proficiency level, examples entirely made up by the

lexicographer may be the best solution. On the other hand, simplicity must give way to authenticity

in the exemplification of rare words (or senses), which need to be shown in the context in which

they are normally found rather than in artificially simplified sentences. In sum, neither corpus-based

nor made-up examples are inherently better – it all depends on the level of the user and on the kind

of word (or sense) being illustrated.

Since bilingual dictionaries serve users at all levels of proficiency, the examples they offer

cannot always be quoted exactly in the form in which they appear in the corpus, but need to be

carefully edited before being put in the dictionary. Editorial intervention involves cutting sentences

down to manageable size as well as eliminating excessively difficult lexical items, obscure culture-

specific references, and other potentially distracting detail.

Something more than simple editing may be required when examples are meant to assist in

encoding, as they normally are in bilingual lexicography (given that the decoding function is taken

care of by the equivalents). As demonstrated in a recent experimental study (Frankenberg-Garcia

2012), production-oriented examples are much more effective if they have been hand-picked in

such a way as to address common production errors, thus providing repeated exposure to structures

that are problematic for learners with a particular mother tongue background.16 While not a realistic

requirement for each single entry, this policy should at least be followed in entries containing words

or structures notoriously difficult for the target users.

Opinions differ as to what it is that example sentences ought to illustrate in a bilingual

dictionary. In trying to answer this question, it helps to think about what bilingual dictionaries are

typically used for. It seems that, whatever their motivation, people do not normally consult a

bilingual dictionary in order to find out how their native language works. Consequently, in a

monodirectional dictionary, it makes sense for examples always to illustrate the users’ L2. This

boils down to illustrating the headword in the L2-L1 section (which is what dictionaries have

traditionally been doing) and the equivalent in the L1-L2 section (which is an innovation). The

innovative approach has been taken by LSW, a dictionary for Polish learners of English, whose

Polish-English part contains examples illustrating the equivalents, as in the following:

płynąć

1 (ryba, człowiek) swim:

· fish swimming up the stream

2 (rzeka, woda) flow:

· The River Elbe flows through the Czech Republic.

· A steady stream of cars flowed past her window.

3 (woda, łzy) run:

· Tears ran down her face.

4 (statek, statkiem) sail:

· We sailed along the coast of Alaska.

5 (czas) go by:

· Time goes by so quickly these days.

Regrettably, most bilingual dictionaries which feature examples still employ them

exclusively to illustrate source language material (i.e. the headword and the combinations it enters

into), in both parts of the dictionary and irrespective of its directionality. In bidirectional

dictionaries, there is, of course, no other option: examples must illustrate the headword, because the

dictionary’s source language is always an L2 for one of the user groups. Still, bilingual learners’

dictionaries being, by definition, monodirectional, there is hope that the situation there might

change in the future.

The controversy over what examples should illustrate is intimately connected with another

question, namely, whether they ought to be translated.17 Most examples support information given

earlier in the entry, but some expand on or qualify it, usually by introducing important exceptions

(e.g. by showing that, in certain circumstances, a different translational equivalent is needed or that

the headword is regularly omitted in translation). Examples which merely support the equivalent(s)

can – perhaps even should – be left untranslated, whereas those which illustrate exceptions must be

supplied with translations, either of the whole or of the part for which the so-far-unmentioned

equivalent is needed. In electronic dictionaries, the question loses much of its urgency, as it is

possible to make translation an optional feature, to be switched on and off when needed. Even there,

however, the problem does not disappear completely. After all, it does matter – especially for

advanced users, who should be given maximally authentic models – whether a particular sentence

has originally been uttered in a given language or is merely a translation (and thus potentially

exhibits features of translationese).

[A] 5. Conclusion

While the present chapter has touched upon some important issues involved in the compilation of

bilingual dictionaries, it has not attempted to make any systematic predictions about the future. This

caution seems justifiable, since even the world’s most renowned lexicographers, when asked what

future dictionaries will look like – or, indeed, whether there still will be dictionaries a few years

from now – tend to avoid direct answers.18 While it is hard at present to imagine a world without

dictionaries, especially bilingual ones, no-one really knows how the world of reference science is

going to be transformed by the technological advances we are witnessing. What does seem certain

is that people will always need information about interlingual lexical correspondences and that, no

matter in what form and through what medium that information is conveyed to them, it will

capitalise upon the work which bilingual lexicographers have done over the past centuries.

Notes

1. Or, in general, on the language less known to them (see the remarks about L3-L2 dictionaries

above).

2. The dictionaries in the Oxford Beginners series are a good example.

3. See Adamska-Sałaciak (2010b) for a review of the inherent deficiencies of monoligual learners’

dictionaries and the resulting need for bilingual ones.

4. As of December 2011 (on the authority of Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, guest lecturer at the

Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań). Basing a dictionary on a parallel

corpus seems a much more viable proposition where specialist publications are concerned (see, e.g.,

the work in progress on a monoscopal English-Polish dictionary of phrasal verbs reported on in

Perdek 2011).

5. Adamska-Sałaciak (2006a: Chapter One) illustrates the different ways in which bilingual

dictionary compilation can proceed, using English-Polish/Polish-English dictionary projects from

the 1990s and early 2000s as examples.

6. For some background on lexicographic outer texts, see the first two chapters of Bielińska (2010).

7. The intricate relations between lexicographic equivalence and semantic identity are discussed in

Adamska-Sałaciak (2013).

8. The term anisomorphism was introduced by Zgusta (1971: 294ff.).

9. The different diagnostic tests for distinguishing vagueness from polysemy proposed by

philosophers and semanticists are not wholly reliable, often yielding inconclusive or conflicting

results (for an overview, see Geeraerts 1993).

10. Either the life of the aging narrator-protagonist or that of his best friend, whose reasons for

killing himself are revealed towards the end of the book, completely undermining the reader’s

earlier perception of the characters and events described.

11. Since Polish does not afford such a possibility, in Barnes (2012) the translator chose the first –

arguably, most salient – reading, thus eliminating any uncertainty as to the interpretation and

destroying the vague aura of mystery carried by the title.

12. A typology of equivalence types, conceived of as areas on a cline, has been developed in

Adamska-Sałaciak (2006a, 2010a, 2011). A discussion illustrated with examples taken from

dictionaries for different language pairs is forthcoming in Adamska-Sałaciak (to appear).

13. The discussion in this paragraph relies on the terminology of the Conventional Figurative

Language Theory developed in Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen (2005).

14. The examples have been obtained from the enTenTen Corpus with the help of the Sketch Engine

Corpus Query System; original spelling has been retained.

15. In this, as in all other examples of dictionary entries quoted in this chapter, only those elements

of the entry are given which illustrate the point under discussion.

16. Although Frankenberg-Garcia’s study deals with definitions and examples, imitating the process

of monoligual dictionary consultation by (Portuguese) learners of English, it seems that this

particular conclusion reached by the author can be extended to bilingual dictionaries.

17. The problem is considered in detail in Adamska-Sałaciak (2006b).

18. It has become a custom at recent lexicographic conferences (e.g. EURALEX 2010, e-LEX

2011) to organise panel discussions on the topic.

References

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2006a. Meaning and the Bilingual Dictionary: The Case of English and

Polish. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2006b. ‘Translation of dictionary examples – notoriously unreliable?’, in

Elisa Corino, Carla Marello, and Cristina Onesti (eds.) Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di

Lessicografia, Torino, 6-9 settembre 2006. Alessandria: Edizioni dell’Orso. vol. 1. 493-501.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2010a. ‘Examining equivalence’, International Journal of Lexicography

23.4. 387-409.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2010b. ‘Why we need bilingual learners’ dictionaries’, in Ilan Kernerman

and Paul Bogaards (eds.). English Learners’ Dictionaries at the DSNA 2009. Tel Aviv: K

Dictionaries. 121-137.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2011. ‘Between designer drugs and afterburners: A lexicographic-

semantic study of equivalence’, Lexikos 21. 1-22.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta 2013. ‘Equivalence, sameness of meaning, and synonymy in a bilingual

dictionary’, International Journal of Lexicography. Special Issue ed. by Fredric Dolezal.

Adamska-Sałaciak, Arleta. To appear. ‘Explaining meaning in a bilingual dictionary’, in Philip

Durkin (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Atkins, Beryl T. Sue. 1985. ‘Monolingual and bilingual learners’ dictionaries: A comparison’, in:

Robert Ilson (ed.). Dictionaries, Lexicography and Language Learning. Oxford: Pergamon

Press. 15-24.

Atkins, B. T. Sue. 2002. ‘Then and now: Competence and performance in 35 years of

lexicography’, in Anna Braasch and Claus Povlsen (eds.). Proceedings of the Tenth EURALEX

International Congress. Vols. 1-2. Copenhagen: Center for Sprogteknologi. 1-28. (Reprinted in

Thierry Fontenelle (ed.) 2008. Practical Lexicography: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University

Press. 247-272.)

Atkins, B. T. Sue and Michael Rundell. 2008. The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

Barnes, Julian. 2011. The Sense of an Ending. London: Jonathan Cape.

Barnes, Julian. 2012. Poczucie kresu. Warszawa: Świat Książki. (Polish transl. of Barnes 2011 by

Jan Kabat).

Bielińska, Monika. 2010. Lexikographische Metatexte. Eine Untersuchung nichtintegrierter

Aueβentexte in einsprachigen Wörterbüchern des Deutschen als Fremdsprache. Frankfurt am

Main: Peter Lang.

Dobrovol’skij, Dmitrij and Elisabeth Piirainen. 2005. Figurative Language: Cross-cultural and

Cross-linguistic Perspective. Amsterdam and Boston: Elsevier.

Duval, Alain. 1991. ‘Equivalence in bilingual dictionaries’, in Thierry Fontenelle (ed.) 2008.

Practical Lexicography: A Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 273-82. (Originally

published as Duval, A. 1991. ‘L’equivalence dans le dictionnaire bilingue’, in Franz-Josef

Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand and Ladislav Zgusta (eds.).

Wörterbücher/ Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires. Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie. An

international encyclopedia of lexicography. Encyclopédie internationale de lexicographie. Berlin

and New York: Mouton de Gruyter. vol. 3. 2817-2824.)

Frankenberg-Garcia, Ana. 2012. ‘Learners’ use of corpus examples’. International Journal of

Lexicography (http://ijl.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/06/25/ijl.ecs011.full.pdf+html)

Geeraerts, Dirk. 1993. ‘Vagueness’s puzzles, polysemy’s vagaries’, Cognitive Linguistics 4: 223-

272 (Reprinted in Geeraerts, D. 2006. Words and Other Wonders. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 99-

148.)

Hausmann, Franz-Josef and Reinhold Otto Werner. 1991. ‘Spezifische Bauteile und Strukturen

zweisprachigen Wörterbücher: Eine Übersicht’, in Franz-Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann,

Herbert Ernst Wiegand, and Ladislav Zgusta (eds.), Wörterbücher/ Dictionaries/ Dictionnaires.

Ein internationales Handbuch zur Lexikographie. An international encyclopedia of

lexicography. Encyclopédie internationale de lexicographie. vol. 3 Berlin and New York:

Mouton de Gruyter.

Perdek, Magdalena. 2011. English phrasal verbs in translation: A lexicographic and corpus study of

equivalence. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Adam Mickiewicz University.

Svensén, Bo. 2009. A Handbook of Lexicography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Zgusta, Ladislav. 1971. Manual of Lexicography. Prague: Academia. The Hague: Mouton.

Dictionaries

Concise Oxford Russian Dictionary. 1998. Revised Edition, based on the Oxford Russian

Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [CORD]

Longman Słownik Współczesny Angielsko-Polski, Polsko-Angielski. 2011. Harlow: Pearson

Education Limited. 2nd edition. [LSW]

Oxford German Dictionary. 2008. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 3rd edition. [OGD]