The problems of lexicographic presentation of words in the bilingual electronic dictionaries
Министерство образования и науки Республики Казахстан
Кокшетауский государственный университет им. Ш.Ш. Уалиханова
Филологический факультет
Кафедра английского языка и МП
Курсовая работа
По дисциплине: “Лексикология и история языка”
Специальность: 050119
На тему: «The problems of lexicographic presentation of words in the bilingual electronic dictionaries»
Выполнила:
Научный руководитель:
Кокшетау, 2011
Contents
Introduction………………………………………………
1.Bilingual
dictionaries:general characteristics……………………………....
2.The main problems in bilingual lexicography.……………………………….…
2.1.The
choice of equivalents…………………………………………………
2.2. The
meaning discrimination…………………………………………
3.The semantic characteristics of the word in bilingual electronic dictionary
“Multitran”…………………………………………………
Summary
and Conclusions…………………………………………………
References...……………………………………………
Appendix .Entries beginning with the letter Y-subject to analysis……………
Introduction
According to N.M. Rayevska [1, p291], lexicography is the theory and practice of compiling dictionaries. Modern English lexicography appeared in the 15 th century. In this period English-Latin dictionaries were in existence. The first explanatory dictionary of the English language was published in 1755 by Samuel Johnson, in which he gave the origin of words and example from the works of the best writers. Lexicography is an important branch of applied linguistics which has a common object of study with lexicology as both describe the vocabulary of a language. The essential difference between the two lies in the degree of systematization and completeness each of them is able to achieve. The province of lexicography is the semantic, formal, and functional description of all individual words. Dictionaries" aim at a more or less complete description, but in so doing cannot attain systematic treatment, so that every dictionary entry presents, as it were, an independent problem. Lexicographers arrange their material most often according to a purely external characteristic, namely alphabetically.
The term dictionary is used to denote a book listing words of a language with their meanings and often with data regarding pronunciation, usage and/or origin. All dictionaries can be divided into two main types - encyclopedic and linguistic. Linguistic dictionaries are word-books; their subject matter is vocabulary -units. Encyclopedias are thing books dealing with concepts (objects and phenomena, their origin and development, relations to other concepts). Encyclopedias sometimes provide data of linguistic nature, such as the origin of the word. Linguistic dictionaries in their turn may include a certain amount of information which is proper to an encyclopedia (the names of famous people together with their birth and death dates or the names of major cities and towns, giving not only the correct spelling and pronunciation, but also a description of their population, location). A linguistic dictionary is a book of words in a language usually listed alphabetically with definitions, pronunciations, etymologies and other linguistic information or with their equivalents in another language .For dictionaries in which the words and their definitions belong to the same language the term unilingual or explanatory is used.
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Bilingual or translation dictionaries are those that explain words by giving their equivalents an another language. Multilingual or polyglot dictionaries are not numerous, they serve chiefly the purpose of comparing synonyms and terminology in various languages. [R.S.Ginzburg, p256].
Different types of dictionaries differ in their aim, in the information they provide and in their size. They differ in the structure and content of the entry. The most complicated type of entry is found in explanatory dictionaries. The entry of an explanatory dictionary of the synchronic type usually presents the following data: accepted spelling, pronunciation, grammatical characteristics, the indication of the part of speech, definition of meanings, modern currency, illustrative examples, derivatives, phraseologycal units, etymology, synonyms, antonyms etc. The entry of translation dictionaries presents the meanings of words with the help of other languages. A bilingual electronic dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. For example Multitran, MultiLex ABBY Lingvo , Promt. Bilingual electronic dictionary can be unidirectional, meaning that they list of meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages. Bidirectional bilingual electronic dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to their translation, a bilingual electronic dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word Other features sometimes present in bilingual electronic dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. [www.trueknowledge.com].
The aim of the course paper is to study theoretical problems connected with presentation of the words in a bilingual electronic dictionary and to see how they are dealt with in lexicography.
To achieve this aim the following tasks are set:
- To define the status of the bilingual electronic dictionary among other books of references
- To examine the semantic problems treated in bilingual electronic dictionaries.
- To make a lexicographic analysis of entries in bilingual electronic dictionaries
The object of the course paper is the bilingual electronic dictionary Multitran [www.multitran.ru].
The subject of the course paper is dictionary entries in the electronic dictionary under consideration.
The theoretical significance of the course paper is that the results and materials can be used in teaching Lexicology and Lexicography and can help students in the work with bilingual electronic dictionaries.
The practical significance of the course paper lies in the fact that he electronic bilingual dictionary is very effective and convenient for use in teaching English
The course paper consists of Introduction, Part 1, dealing with the history of bilingual lexicography, Part 2, dwelling on the semantic problems in the bilingual electronic dictionary, Part 3, describing the different ways of presenting words in the dictionary under consideration, Summary and Conclusions, References and Appendix.
1.Bilingual electronic dictionaries: general characteristics
Today's English learner has a wide choice of dictionaries in which to choose from. There are dictionaries with American English, with British English, with idioms or slang, and even with pictures. One of the most popular dictionaries are bilingual electronic dictionaries. An electronic dictionary is either a small handheld computer with integrated reference materials, or a PDA or a smart phone with a dictionary program. Electronic dictionaries are also programs that can be downloaded from the Internet or purchased on a CD-ROM or DVD and installed on a desktop computer or on a lap top. Other electronic dictionaries can be searched and consulted online on the Internet. The computer-installed dictionaries can often be consulted directly from within any application that uses editable text. The term may be used in a broader sense to refer to the features of a machine-readable dictionary or spell checker. An electronic dictionary is an electronic reference resource that contains a library of words and their meanings, spellings, and etymologies. Sometimes electronic dictionaries serve a similar function to regular dictionaries; they are searchable and they allow one to find specific bits of information about words. In other cases, they work in the background of other programs, such as word processors, and exist only to ensure proper spelling. When a word typed into a word processor program does not match any of the words stored in the electronic dictionary, the word is marked, so the writer knows to check the word. Some electronic dictionaries can also serve as thesauruses or translation tools .A portable electronic dictionary tends to be more convenient than a paper dictionary, as it contains many more words in a much smaller space. Also, it tends to be much faster to search an electronic dictionary than to search a paper dictionary; one only needs to type in the desired word to see it and all of the information associated with it.
Generally, dictionaries of the same editions made by the same publishers can also be found in print form. An electronic dictionary, however, can be updated much more frequently and at any time; there is no need for a new edition of the dictionary when a few new words come into being or when the meanings of some words change in a few subtle ways. Also, companies who host online dictionaries often can make money as a result by allowing others to place advertisements on the dictionary's Web site.
Sometimes, an electronic dictionary on the Internet is run by an online community and is not officially affiliated with any formal group or publishing company. Sometimes these dictionaries are very formal and contain many links to more official dictionaries. In other cases, however, they are intended to go beyond the formal definitions of words. Some dictionaries are intended to be humorous and focus on the informal cultural uses of words. Some electronic dictionaries contain only a single language (monolingual), but others are bilingual dictionaries and translation dictionaries and may also include, medical or legal dictionaries, thesauri, travel dictionaries, dictionaries of idioms and colloquialisms, a guide to pronunciation, a grammar reference, common phrases and collocations, and a dictionary of foreign loan words.
Electronic dictionary databases, especially those included with software dictionaries are usually extensive and can contain up to 500,000 headwords and definitions, verb conjugation tables, and a grammar reference section. Bilingual electronic dictionaries and monolingual dictionaries of inflected languages often include an inter-active verb conjugation, and are capable of word stemming and lemmatization.
Manufacturers and developers of electronic dictionaries may offer native content from their own lexicographers, licensed data from print publications, or both, as in the case of Babylon offering premium content from Merriam Webster, and Ultralingua offering additional premium content from Collins, Masson, and Simon & Schuster, and Paragon Software offering original content from Duden, Britannica, Harrap, Merriam-Webster and Oxford.
A major consideration is the quality of the lexical database. Dictionaries intended for collegiate and professional use generally include most or all of the lexical information to be expected in a quality printed dictionary. The content of electronic dictionaries developed in association with leading publishers of printed dictionaries is more reliable that those aimed at the traveler or casual user, while bilingual dictionaries that have not been authored by teams of native speaker lexicographers for each language, will not be suitable for academic work. Some developers opt to have their products evaluated by an independent academic body such as the CALICO.
Another major consideration is that the devices themselves and the dictionaries in them are generally designed for a particular market. As an example, almost all handheld Japanese-English electronic dictionaries are designed for people with native fluency in Japanese who are learning and using English; Japanese words must by entered by pronunciation, not by how they're written, so in most cases a user can't look up a word seen in print unless she or he already knows that word (not a problem for the native Japanese user, but it rather defeats the point for one learning Japanese). Similar limitations exist in most two or multi-language dictionaries and can be especially crippling when the languages are not written in the same script or alphabet; it's important to find a dictionary optimized for the user's native language[B.C. Perry,p.47 ].
The most important challenge for practical and theoretical lexicographers is to define the functions of a bilingual electronic dictionary. The bilingual electronic dictionary may have as its function to help users translate texts from one language into another, or its function may be to help users understand foreign-language texts. In such situations users will require the dictionary to contain different types of data that have been specifically selected for the function in question. If the function is understanding foreign-language texts the electronic dictionary will contain foreign-language entry words and native-language definitions, which have been written so that they can be understood by the intended user group. If the dictionary is intended to help translate texts, it will need to include not only equivalents but also collocations and phrases translated into the relevant target language.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of creating a bilingual electronic dictionary is the fact that lexems or words cover more than one area of meaning, but this multiple meanings do not correspond to a single word in the target language. For example, in English< a ticket can provide entrance to a movie theatre, authorize a bus or train ride, or can be given to you by a police officer for exceeding the posted speed limit. In German these three meanings are not covered by one word as in English, but rather there are several options:Eintrittskarte or Fahrkarte and Mahnung/Bussgel bescheid.
As a result of the flourishing increase in international interaction and cooperation, more and more of us are coming to realize that bilingual electronic dictionaries have become a necessary part of our daily economic, intellectual, and cultural activities. Bilingual electronic dictionaries in current use have grown out of practice and tradition rather than scientific research and can no longer meet our needs. It gives linguists an insight into the practical problems of compiling dictionaries, acquaints lexicographers with the theoretical approaches to the linguistic problems they encounter in their careers,
provides librarians with a new system of classifying bilingual electronic
dictionaries, and helps language teachers to select the most appropriate
dictionaries for their students[www.
2. The main problems in bilingual lexicography
The semantic problems involved into bilingual dictionaries are different from and more complicated than those in monolingual ones because the latter are prepared for people who participate and understand the culture being described whereas the former describe a culture which differs, in various proportions, from the users". Like other aspects of linguistic description, semantic studies have not always been appreciated by lexicographers. As E.Nida noted [6, p279], : an essential part of investigations in semantics is reflected in dictionary-making, a highly specialized process, which, however, too often reflects only a meager appreciation of some fundamental problems involved into analysis of meaning.
There are many problems in bilingual lexicography: usage, pictorial illustrations,
illustrative examples, word family, the choice of equivalents, meaning discrimination.
»
Usage can be defined as the study of socially graded synonyms." Ain't I" and "I am not", for instance, have the same meaning, but quite different social values. Illustrative examples are used in dictionary to prove that a word or a particular meaning of a word exists in the language. The term "pictorial illustration" takes Flemming's [7, p247], definition as a point of departure. Fleming defined pictorial illustrations as "those configurations of line, dot, or area, and any combination of these three resembling events or objects either as perceived or as generally conceived. One of the major problems in making dictionaries for language teaching is the selection of the words and meanings. Selection should depend on adequate sample in the target language. Another problem pertaining to the use of bilingual dictionaries in language teaching in the inclusion of etymology. Malkiel [8, p379] thinks that etymologies of the foreign language shoul be included. Bilingual dictionary should provide etymological information only about those foreign words which are borrowed from or by the user's native language.
Al-Kasimi [9, p58] pointed out two main problems in bilingual lexicography: the choice of equivalents and meaning discrimination.
2.1 The choice of equivalents
The major task of bilingual lexicographer is to find appropriate equivalents in the target language to the units of the course language. This task involves a great deal of translation.
Jakobson [11, p233], labels differently three types of translation:
l)intralingual translation or rewording is an interpretation of verbal signs by
means of other signs of the same language.
2)interlingual translation or translation proper is an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of some other language.
3)intersemiotic translation or transmutation is an interpretation of verbal
signs by means of nonverbal sign system. Bilingual lexicography is obviously concerned with translation proper or interlingual translation which will be referred to here as translation. There are various ways to define translation, but all definitions share one or more of the following concepts depending upon the special interest of each writer;
a) The transference of meaning from'one text to another language. An
example of this
concept is definition of translation as "the branch of applied
science of language which
is specifically concerned with the problem—or the fact—of the transference
of meaning
from one set of patterned symbols into another set of patterned symbols.
- Transcoding or the transformation of symbols,. This concept is represented by Oettinger's [12, pi04], definition of translation in terms of "the process of transforming signs or representation into another signs or representation."
- Finding equivalent lexical items. Oettinger's definition of interlingual translation as "the replacement of elements of one language, the domain of translation, by equivalent elements of another language, the range," serves as an example here.
Although a bilingual dictionary deals mainly with the last concept, namely the translation of entry words, the other two concepts are also relevant as in the translation of the illustrative sentences and in transliteration of proper nouns of the source language for which there is no possible translation in the target language, especially when the two languages employ different writing systems.
Catford [13,130-132], believes that whereas a monolingual lexicographer
deals with defining equivalents, his bilingual counterpart is specifically
concerned with transition equivalents. Broadly speaking, a translation-equivalent
can be defined as "a target-language text, or item-in-text which changes
when and only when a given source-language text or item is changed."
One of "the linguistic processes to establish translation
equivalents is the commutation test which makes use of a bilingual as an informant The bilingual is presented with a sentence in the source language and requested to put it in the target language, Then the items of the sentence are gradually changed one by one and every time an item is changed the bilingual provides the proper translation.
Nida [14,p27], recommends that even if a lexicographer has long experience with the foreign language he should seek the constant help of a native informant of that language in order to weed out improper usage and avoid translationisms.
The translations of entry words in a bilingual dictionary are usually of two types: transitional equivalents and explanatory equivalents. A translational equivalent is a lexical unit which can be immediately inserted into a sentence in the target language: e,g < in an English-Russian dictionary, bоу=мальчик. An explanatory or descriptive equivalent is one which cannot be always inserted into a sentence in the target language; e.g. boyhood: отрочество. То cite a mutational equivalent for the word "boyhood." the lexicographer may give "детство" or "юность". But the English entry word is restricted to male children whereas the two Russian translations equivalents are not: and so the lexicographer may try a compromise and say, for instance, boyhood : детство мальчика.
Zgusta [15,p8] provides the following example :
Ossetic Ziw "Collective help" (socially expected help, above all in agricultural works, or organized within or by a group of people).
Here, "collective help" is an explanatory equivalent, and the phrase in parentheses is an explanation. However, Zgusta admits that there are a great number of borderline cases. The difference between an explanatory equivalent and an explanation is that whereas the latter tends to be similar to a definition or description, the former tends to approximate a translational unit and so it might be standardized by acceptance and use in the language. Nevertheless, the distinction between translational and explanatory equivalents is a useful one. The explanatory equivalent is of a general nature and it works well if the target language is the user's native tongue, because it (the explanatory equivalent) may suggest, or elicit in him some other equivalent which fits the particular context he is dealing with. On the other hand, although a translational equivalent conveys less information than an explanatory one, it has the advantage of offering the user a lexical unit which can be
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directly employed. Consequently, translational equivalents should be favored in a bilingual dictionary intended for the speakers of the source language as an aid to produce the target language.
A major problem which confronts the bilingual lexicographer is that he does not always find the required equivalents in the target language. Two types of vocabulary particularly contribute to this problem; the culture-bound words which denote objects peculiar to the culture of the source language, and the scientific and technological terminology which does not exist in the vernacular languages of the developing countries. Although many of these developing countries have a special linguistic body that undertakes the responsibility of creating the needed vocabulary, the lexicographer and his assistants often find themselves obliged to create a translation equivalent which does not exist in the target language.
The UNESCO committee that studied the use of vernacular languages in education pointed out that there are five different ways to expand or extend a vocabulary: word borrowing, coinage, giving new meaning to existing words, extending the meaning of existing words, and compounding new words from existing elements from the language or from it and some other one. The use of one device or another depends on the subject matter. The linguistic controversy between the innovators and the purists in many of these countries is similar to that which was going on in the 16th century' in England. The innovators defend the practice of free borrowing and adaptation from foreign languages to meet the ever-increasing need for scientific and technical terminology, and the purists protest against the foreign-derived words and urge freer use of pure items taken from the vernacular.
Most linguists would agree that "all cognitive experience and its classification is conveyable in any existing language. They would also reject the idea of the inefficiency, formlessness, and over-particularity of primitive speech. But whereas it is nearly always possible to establish translation equivalence between sentences, it is often difficult to do so between lexical items. This difficulty rises from the fact that there is a close relationship between language and culture, and since words are symbols for dynamic and explicit features of the culture, it is not easy, to establish absolute correspondence between related words in two different languages. Cultural differences are explicit, for instance, in words
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related to ecology, kinship, technologies, currencies, weights and measures, time units, and the like. The difficulty also rises from the very nature of meaning.
Aside from the differences in connotation and stylistic affiliations, synonyms or near synonyms differ in phonology; there are significant differences in the number of syllables, pattern of stresses, and rhyme.
Absolute equivalents which have exactly the same semantic and grammatical function in both languages are rare. The following are a few examples of why differences between two related items in two languages may exist:
- Gender is an example of a grammatical category which differs from one language to another. In English, for instance, "moon" is masculine and "sun" is feminine, but in Russian "луна" is feminine and "солнце" is neutral.
- Languages differ in their parts of speech. Whereas English and many other Indo-European languages traditionally have eight parts of speech, some languages have only three: nouns, verbs, and particles. Languages do not only differ in the number of classes, but in the classification of the same action or state as well. Such English nouns as "food," "faith," and "love" must be translated as verbs in the Mazatec language of Mexico.
- A lexical item may have a proper denotative meaning in one language, but its corresponding item in another language might have undesirable connotations. Vulgarity is not necessarily related to sex and procreation only: in some languages calling one's grandmother by name is considered to be vulgar.
- A lexical unit in one language may have two components, like the German greeting "Guten Tag" but its equivalent in another language may have one component only, as in English, where it is translated into a single word, "Hello. "[Al-Kasimi, p68]
The search for equivalents should be preceded by a contrastive analysts of the source and target languages in order to determine the ranks in a grammatical hierarchy (e.g. sentence—clause—group—word — morpheme), to determine corresponding grammatical categories (e.g. plurality, gender, etc, and to determine reciprocal parts of speech. Usually an English equivalent of a German noun will first be sought among English nouns. But there are exceptions to this principle. German handarbeit (subst.) has a good equivalent in English hand-work (subst.). But if it is used as a label on wares, the English equivalent is hand-made, because the English substantive denotes only the process, not its results.
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After the contrastive grammatical analysts has been done, the lexicographer has to determine the meanings of the grammatical and lexical items.. The analyst should look for the distinctive situational features which are shared by the two related items. The two equivalents must be related to all or some of the same, features of the situation. Among the situational features which may be relevant to the source-language text arc those which determine the selection of a particular variety a particular dialect, register, or style-of the source language.
The lexicographer can follow a certain procedure to determine whether the equivalent he chooses is absolute (i.e. covers the whole range of the lexical meaning of the entry word) or not. He collects a broad range of typical contexts кипе source language in which the entry word occurs. Then he translates these sentences into the target language. If the prospective equivalent can fit in each instance of the translated sentence, then it is absolute, otherwise it is partial In the latter case, the lexicographer has to find some other (partial) equivalents)," When a partial equivalent is given, the dictionary user's attention must be attracted to the differences, grammatical or semantic.
If a transitive verb in the source language is given an equivalent which is also transitive the user may assume that the parallelism between the two words is complete when it is not; and so the bilingualism of dictionaries may become a dangerous source of unsystematic omission.
The translation of egocentric expressions (idioms and figures of speech) presents special difficulties in bilingual lexicography. Certain types of adaptation are necessary in the translation of these expressions. A metaphor, for example, is not necessarily translated by a corresponding metaphor; it may be translated by a metaphor, a simile, or just a lexical item. If the speakers of the target language have not heard of Adam and they do not grow apples, the English metaphor "Adam's apple" cannot be translated into a metaphor. Metaphors are closely-related to the speaker's experience, and when they are translated literally the lexicographer should use certain practical or linguistic devices to attract the user's attention to the fact that the expression involves an unusual extension of meaning, because such extensions of meaning in the source language do not always have parallels in the target language.
Existing bilingual dictionaries tend to pile up synonyms or near synonyms in the target
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language. There are two arguments for this trend: it provides the user with various expressions for stylistic variation, and since there are always slight differences between near synonyms, the more synonyms you give the richer the information will be. However, modern linguists prefer to cite one equivalent if possible and to avoid piling up synonyms. If several equivalents are presented, some indication should be given of the can text (or kind of context) that would provoke the less expected version. Our choice of the equivalent (or the first equivalent) will be determined by the decision which one is more broadly applicable; it should be the particular equivalent that the student is most likely to need.
Malkiel [8, pi5], believes that ideally the translation-equivalent should stand by itself. Adaptations or comments are never added except in limited cases such as: to avoid ambiguity as in the case of homonyms, to point out that the equivalent is partial and to indicate linguistic or cultural differences between the entry word and its equivalent, and to avoid foreseeable grammatical complications.
2.2. Meaning discrimination
When a person wants to say something, in a foreign language he might consult a bilingual dictionary. But instead of finding one word which expresses his meaning, he is frequently confronted with several words which he cannot distinguish one from another. For example, if a Russian student of English wants to say "Я хочу отправиться в тур по Европе" in English and does not know the equivalent of "тур" in English, he consults a dictionary which may give him the following entry:
(I) Turn, round, twining, winding; revolution, circumference, circuit, compass; twist, strain; tour, trip; trick, dodge, wile; feat; office, service, vein, manner; style; place, order; lathe; wheel;mould.
Hietsch believes [16, p233], that the speaker will not be able to select the equivalent which fits his meaning unless he has command of the English language, in which case it is not too likely that he will need the dictionary. The bilingual dictionary should provide meaning discriminations which enable the user to select the appropriate equivalent or the proper sense of an equivalent, and unless the problem of meaning discrimination is solved systematically, the bilingual electronic dictionary cannot be a dependable guide to the proper
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equivalents. Meaning discrimination, which is considered by some as "the crucial problem of bilingual lexicographical methodology", has not yet been completely solved. There are still other aspects of the problem that need to be considered on the basis of further research. This section discusses the types of meaning discrimination, when they should be used, and in which language they should be provided. The section also proposes new formulas which govern the use of meaning discriminations.
There are cases in which a polysemous source (or target) word requires meaning discriminations and there are others in which it does not. The necessity of meaning discrimination depends on the purpose of the dictionary, i.e. whether it is meant for comprehension or production, and whether it is intended for the speaker of the source or the target language.
If the dictionary is prepared for the purpose of production (for the speakers of the source language of course), e.g. an English-Russian dictionary for English-speaking users, then no meaning discrimination is necessary in the following two cases:
(a)if the source word has one meaning for which the target language has one word of only one meaning. E.g.: mosque-мечеть.
(b)If the source word has one meaning for which the target language has a polysemous word (having two or more meanings). E.g.: Tunis-Тунис.
But meaning discrimination is necessary in the following two cases:
(c)The source word is polysemous and for each of its meanings the
target language has a separate word of one meaning. E.g.: suicide-самоубийство,
самоубийца.
Iaccunni thinks [17, p46], that no meaning discrimination is necessary in (c) because the native speaker of the target language is able to select the proper sense of polysemuos target word which fits the source context best. On the other hand, Bull [18, pl22], feels that meaning discrimination is necessary in this case only where the meaning cannot be determined from the context.
If the dictionary is intended for comprehension only (for the speakers of the target, language of course); e.g. a Russian-English dictionary for English-speaking users, then no meaning discrimination is necessary in the following two cases:
(d) The source word has one meaning for which the target language has one word of only one meaning. E.g.: мечеть-mosque.
(e) The source word is polysemous and for each of its senses the target language has one word of only one meaning. E.g.: Тунис-Tunis; Tunisia.
But meaning discrimination is necessary in the following two cases: (f) The source word has one meaning the target language has two or more polysemous words. E.g.: roHKH-run(rurming place), race(contest of speed).
It is necessary to take into consideration that each dictionary should serve one purpose only (either production or comprehension) and one speaker only (either the speaker of the source language or the speaker of the target language) one can well understand that meaning discriminations should be provided in the source language if the dictionary is intended for the speakers of the source language and in the target language if the dictionary is meant for the speakers of the target language. In other words, meaning discriminations should be presented in the native language of the users for whom the dictionary is prepared.
Martin [19, pl56], believes that the definitions of the numbered senses
in a monolingual dictionary should be used as meaning discriminations
for the equivalents cited in a bilingual dictionary. And so the translation-equivalents
in the bilingual dictionary should have numbers referring to definitions
having identical numbers in the monolingual dictionary, or the bilingual
dictionary can be run at the bottom of each page of a monolingual dictionary.
As Hietsch pointed out the suggested method "puts a heavy strain
on the patience of the user, whose eyes are thus expected to travel
from one book to another, or at least to the bottom of the -page, where
incidentally, they are liable to be caught by identical numberings of
functional subdivisions (п.: adj., v.t: v,i, etc,). Besides, the structural
diversity of the vocabulary between any two languages makes it very
difficult to use the definitions of a monolingual dictionary as meaning
discriminations for the bilingual one. [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
3. The semantic characteristics of the word in bilingual electronic dictionary
Nowadays, the knowledge of three languages (Kazakh- our mother tongue, Russian -the language of international communication and English-the foreign language) is a strategy of successful developing in our country. Now before an education system there is a problem of preparing students to cultural, professional and to personal contacts with representatives of countries with other social systems, social traditions and language culture. One of the main goals of learning a foreign language is learners" familiarizing with the speaking another language. This knowledge can be offered in the form of the comment in a dictionary.
Currently, Multitran is one of the largest and most popular web dictionaries in Runet. Every day, over 90 thousand people visit Multitran.ru, and over 1.5 million search requests are processed.
Every user of Multitran can ask a question concerning translation on the Multitran forums. Multitran users also arrange offline meetings from time to time, so called 'pow-wows'. Such pow-wows were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev.
The developer of the Multitran software is Andrey Pominov, Moscow.
Multitran includes the following online dictionaries:
English-Russian and Russian-English
German-Russian and Russian-German
Spanish-Russian and Russian-Spanish
French-Russian and Russian-French
Dutch-Russian and Russian-Dutch
Italian-Russian and Russian-Italian
Latvian-Russian and Russian-Latvian
Estonian-Russian and Russian-Estonian
Japanese-Russian and Russian-Japanese
Afrikaans-Russian and Russian-Afrikaans
English-German and German-English
English-Japanese and Japanese-English
The following dictionaries to be offered soon:
Azerbaijanian-Russian and Russian-Azerbaijanian
Norwegian-Russian and Russian-Norwegian
Turkish-Russian and Russian-Turkish
Ukrainian-Russian and Russian-Ukrainian
Features
- Multitran's database contains over 10 million terms
- Every registered user can expand the dictionaries online (over 1000 translators are active contributors)
- Alphabetical, morphological, word-combination search
- Simultaneous search in the dictionaries, forums, and in the database of English and Russian parallel sentences
Advantages and disadvantages of Multitran
The Multitran base was created by scanning a wealth of paper dictionaries and combining all the translations in one database. The huge volume of the base is both an advantage and a disadvantage because:
- Multitran may offer well over 100 translations for a word, which complicates the task of choosing the right equivalent for beginning language learners, though it comes very handy for language professionals.
- Search results often give duplicate translations of a term for various disciplines.
- Multitran may give very narrow meanings of a term, suitable only for very limited contexts.
- Multitran has a feature enabling users to check the equivalent translations, but checking each and every term may require dozens of man-years of work. Every registered user can issue a warning about identified mistakes, so until a mistake is corrected, it remains marked accordingly. Multitran users have reported about 8000 mistakes using this functionality, and most of them have been corrected. Thus, users not only add their own terms (added by users are more than 180 thousand words and phrases), but also help to clean the database from mistakes.
- The feature allowing every registered user to contribute is an advantage, but it also carries the risk that mistranslations are added to the database, because they are added arbitrarily by Multitran users and depend on the level of the contributing individual user's knowledge, which may not be up to the mark.
- Multitran.ru is down quite often
The aim of the course paper is to study theoretical problems connected with presentation of the word in a bilingual electronic dictionary and see how they are dealt with in practical lexicography. To achieve it by random choice we have studied all the dictionary entries beginning with the letter Y-in Multitran dictionary. The quantity of the letter Y in Multitran dictionary is 110 words.
Usually, Multitran`s dictionary entry includes the grammatical labels, indicating the part of speech, stylistic labels which show meaning, a translation equivalent, verbal examples, linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts in which the word can be used, phonetic transcription ,style markers are given for some words.
Each person who is interested in teaching English can use Multitran dictionary. You just need to type the word in English and you will see the following:
For example we can type the entry- yellow
yellow [ˈjɛləʊ] n | Webster | phrases | g-sort
gener. жёлтый цвет; желтизна; желток; человек с жёлтой кожей; жёлтая, бульварная газета; жёлтая лихорадка; карантинный флаг; подлость
amer., jarg. мулатка; квартеронка; негритянка со светлой кожей
biol. краситель жёлтого цвета
colloq. трусость Stylistic label
diplom. бульварная газета; жёлтая газета
eng. жёлтая краска; жёлтый пигмент
entomol. желтушка; желтушка (Colias)
jarg. золотые наручные часы; масло; светлокожий негр (чаще негритянка)
Makarov желтая, бульваhная газета
phytophathol. желтуха Transcription
rare. мулат
yellow [ˈjɛləʊ] v
gener. желтеть; становиться жёлтым Grammatical
archit. выжелтить; пожелтет label
Makarov делать желтым
yellow [ˈjɛləʊ] adj
gener. жёлтый; бульварный; пожелтелый; "косоглазые"; низкий; подлый; жёлтенький (Andrew Goff)
amer., colloq., derog. светлокожий (о мулате со светлой кожей)
cartogr., amer. жёлтый (характеристика сигналов на морских картах)
colloq. трусливый
Makarov бульварный (о прессе); желтый (о прессе); золотистый; монголоидный; с желтой кожей; с золотистым отливом
obs. завистливый (о взгляде и т. п.); ревнивый; подозрительный
yellow smth. v
Makarov желтить
yellow : 1269 phrases in 64 subjects
Advertising 9 Linguistics 1
Agriculture 74 Literature 1
American 16 Logistics 1
Anatomy 2 Makarov 98
Architecture 21 Marine science 2
Atomic energy 1 Mass media 1
Australian slang 3 Medicament 1
Automation 3 Medicine 89
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