The problems of lexicographic presentation of words in the bilingual electronic dictionaries

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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/Dictionary].

 

  3. The semantic characteristics of the word in bilingual electronic dictionary  

                                “Multitran”   

 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

 

                                             Webster`s explanatory dictionary

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