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A Comparative Review of Two Monolingual Dictionaries
of the English Language
The basic argument of the comparative review is that the monolingual
dictionary for learners should be most useful to its readership
by focusing on the clarity of purpose and easy reference. The content
of the book should therefore be adjusted to the learners' needs
and communicate in a concise and uncomplicated manner all the information
that its readership needs to know in order to understand the core
meaning and secondary meanings of a particular foreign word, assist
with its usage and offer information which a native speaker knows
intuitively. The analyzed dictionaries deal with the matters differently…
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the full article…
Book Review - A Non-Native User's Perspective
of Corpus-Based Dictionaries of English and French
Corpus-based dictionaries are intended for any native or non-native
speaker of a particular language. Nonetheless, terminology researchers
insist that professional translators need to be aware of the array
of resources made available to them by modern dictionaries…
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the full article…
Dictionary Review: Hungarian Practical Dictionary
When I picked up this small dictionary of 31,000 entries, I wondered
'Why do we need a small dictionary when we have the benchmark large
Országh?' The title explains it one way: it is a practical
dictionary. The Preface mentions the other reason: it is a contemporary
dictionary. Indeed, we all know that no matter how comprehensive
a dictionary might be, it becomes obsolete by the time it emerges
from the printer. An interesting phenomenon can be illustrated through
the term ATM, for example…
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the full article…
What Should a Learner's Dictionary Include?
The present study aims at the comparison and contrast of three monolingual
(English-English) dictionaries namely: Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary of Current English, Collins Cobuild English Language
Dictionary and Cambridge International Dictionary of English, with
the learner in mind. It has been found that there are differences
in presenting lexical items in each of the three dictionaries, which
prompted me to invent a heuristic checklist against which each dictionary
is evaluated with reference to twenty six representative lexical
items chosen at random…
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the full article…
e-Dictionaries
Dictionaries are a serious and time-consuming matter with a lot
of work to do before publishing and e-dictionaries cannot be an
exception.
Real dictionaries can be characterized as follows:
Dictionaries make a complete or partial inventory
of a language in one or more languages…
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the full article…
Guaraní Dictionary
This paper-bound, small-sized (4 x 6 inches) booklet is one in a
series of concise dictionaries published by Hippocrene Books, Inc.
The inside cover lists 41 other dictionaries in print, including
such mainstream languages as Arabic, Czech, Dutch, Norwegian, Russian,
Spanish, etc., but also such esoteric languages as Gypsy, Ladino,
Nahuatl, Twi and Zapotec (Isthmus). The back cover mentions other
types of books published by Hippocrene Books, with such interesting
topics as the culinary practices of various Latin American countries
and a Dictionary and Phrasebook of Chilenismos…
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the full article…
On Dictionaries: A Conversation with Ilan Stavans
VA: What is language?
IS: The use of standardized symbols to communicate
in a structured and consistent fashion.
VA: Standardized symbols?
IS: Sounds make words and words are symbols. By
circumscribing the sounds PE-YO-TE to the small, soft, thornless,
blue-and-green cactus found in Mexico and in the Southwestern United
States, society attaches a name to the object. The name represents
the object and stands in its stead. Objects have specific words
attached. This specificity is crucial, for if the cactus changed
every minute, language would defeat its own purpose. It would be
shaped by chaos …
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the full article…
Research on Dictionary Use by Trainee Translators
It is a generally held belief that using dictionaries efficiently
can provide valuable benefits to trainee translators. However, as
some authors have stated (Roberts, 1992; Mackintosh, 1998; Corpas
et al., 2001), there has not been enough empirical research to establish
the profile of trainee translators as dictionary users. In this
paper, we outline the results we obtained from an empirical research
carried out among students of Translation Studies at University
Jaume I (Castellon, Spain) in order to understand the situation
of our students …
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the full article…
Online dictionary resources for patent, technical and medical translation
from Japanese, German and French to English
Part 2 - Useful Websites for Translation of Patents from German
and French
Part 2 will look at websites and techniques that can be used in
a similar way for translation into English of patent applications
published mainly in German and French, but to some extent also in
other European languages …
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the full article…
Time Pressure and Dictionary Availability
Electronic documentation has become an essential tool in the area
of translation studies research. Needless to say, psycholinguistic
methods of verbal reporting (Think-Aloud Protocols - TAPs) have
also been efficiently used to conduct scientific experiments in
this field. This paper is concerned with a summary of two articles,
which were published by the Copenhagen Business School in
its publication "Probing the process in translation: methods
and results" in 1999. The two articles were chosen because
both of them are concerned with two essential issues that worry
most translators: time pressure and dictionary availability…
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the full article…
Choosing a Good Spanish English Translation Dictionary
English Spanish dictionaries come in all shapes, sizes, specialties,
and mediums. There are paperback dictionaries, medical dictionaries,
desktop dictionaries, electronic dictionaries, good dictionaries,
and bad dictionaries …
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the full article…
Online dictionary resources
for patent, technical and medical translation from Japanese, German
and French to English. Part 1 The Japan Patent Office Website.
I have always been intrigued
by the very idea of a dictionary. Or at least since a very young
age, I think I must have had an instinctive understanding of the
value of a good dictionary. When I was 15 (1967), I found in the
attic an unexpected treasure: an old Latin-Greek-German-Czech dictionary,
published around 1920. It had more than 600 pages and it was in
perfectly good shape except for the binding which was falling apart.
I somehow found the money to have it bound again and it came in
very handy because for the next 5 years or so I was quite obsessed
with Latin. But passion for Latin proved to be a passing phase in
the life of this teenager. French proved to be much more interesting,
German much more useful, and Japanese … well, Japanese was
a challenge that I just could not resist, which is why I started
learning Japanese as a full time student at Charles University in
Prague in 1975, and 30 years later, I am a pretty good beginner…
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the full article…
New English-Polish and Polish-English
Dictionaries: Some Problems Related to Legal, Financial and Insurance
Terminology
Until recently Polish-English
translators had to do with Jan Stanisławski's The Great
English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary or The
Kosciuszko Foundation English-Polish and Polish-English Dictionary,
both of which were published in the late '50s or early '60s. For
nearly forty years they were the largest source of reference, although
not always a reliable one due to errors/omissions and a lapse of
time. They had a dozen or so reprints but their content remained
basically unchanged. My 1998 edition of the Stanisławski Dictionary
has a new modern and colorful cover, but it does not contain a large
number of new speciaL terms related to computers, Internet, modern
technology, biotechnology, etc., as well as terms corresponding
to the new Polish political, economic and legal environment after
the fall of Communism in the late '80s…
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