Bilingual Lexicography

Deny A. Kwary

Today’s Topics

1. What is a Bilingual Dictionary?2. The Steps to Making a Bilingual

Dictionary3. Parallel Corpora and Comparable Corpora4. Equivalents in Bilingual Dictionaries5. Structure of Bilingual Dictionaries

1. What is a Bilingual Dictionary? A bilingual dictionary is a dictionary that

presents the lexicon and phraseology of one language (called the source language) and translates these components into a second language (the target language).

Since a bilingual dictionary is a practical tool, it almost invariably consists of a single volume and is often (but not always) divided into two parts – the source language of the first part becomes the target language of the second part, and vice versa.

2. The Steps to Making a Bilingual Dictionary

According to Atkins (1990), the production of a bilingual dictionary can be divided into three main stages:

1.Analysis of the source language: This stage is performed by lexicographers who

analyze their native language and produce a detailed, structured account of each lexical item (word, phrase, or morpheme).

This account of the source language is called the framework.

The framework must also contain many examples of phraseology typical of the way the word is normally used, as well as any other information that will facilitate the next stage, called the transfer.

2. Transfer: This stage is the translation stage: the meanings of words

and their contexts are translated into the target-language system.

At a glance, it looks simple, particularly because the lexical units or phraseological items tend to be short. In fact, it is an extremely complex task, not least because different translation equivalents of a given word need to be chosen in different contexts, and in some cases there is no direct translation equivalent, so a circumlocution must be found.

The final product of this stage is the translated framework. This framework is an extremely rich bilingual resource, but

too rich for a dictionary because much of the information is specific only to certain contexts. Therefore, it needs careful trimming and generalizing.

3. Synthesis: During synthesis, the translated framework is cut to

size and reorganized into manageable, readable dictionary entries.

Editors work in pairs: an editor whose mother tongue is the source language works with a target-language speaker.

Editors use all sorts of conventional resources (other dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, and glossaries) and, in some cases, draw upon the skills and knowledge of specialist consultants in technical areas such as the terminology of medicine, law, business, or science. Of course, they also have access to corpus data.

3. Parallel Corpora Parallel corpora consist of original texts

alongside target-language translations, aligned as far as possible sentence by sentence.

Parallel corpora allow instant access to translations and instant comparisons to the original texts.

However, a translation is inevitably a text written under the influence of another language, and a translated text is only as good as its translator. The danger of interference from the idiom and syntax of the source language is ever present.

3. Comparable Corpora Comparable corpora are collections of texts with

similar contents in both languages. Though related more loosely, the texts in

comparable corpora were produced for their own sakes, i.e., independently, not in relation to a source text in a foreign language.

However, comparable corpora also require extra work of lexicographers; without a ready-to-use solution, they must search around similar themes in their hunt for translation equivalents.

4. Equivalents in bilingual dictionaries1. Full equivalence:

leap year tahun kabisat

2. Partial equivalence: Add the ‘missing’ feature.rice1 (husked rice ) beras; padi tanpa kulit yang siap

untuk dimasak menjadi nasi rice2 (cooked rice) nasi; beras yang sudah dimasak

atau dikukus sehingga dapat dimakan

3. Zero equivalence: Use direct borrowing, new coinage, loan-translation, or description.

fiscal fiskalboxing day Hari libur resmi setelah Hari Natal. Di

Inggris, boxing day jatuh pada tanggal 26 Desember. Secara tradisional pada hari ini orang-orang membagikan hadiah natal yang dibungkus dalam bentuk kotak (box).

5. Structure of Bilingual Dictionaries The structure of a bilingual entry ranges from very simple to

very complex.

A very simple structure of a bilingual dictionary: A monosemous regular word in the source language is translated by a monosemous word in the target language, with no irregularities.For example: Kamus Online Jawa-Indonesian, Gadjah Mada University.

headword

translation

A complex structure of a bilingual dictionary, e.g. Oxford-Hachette French Dictionary on CD-ROM, 3rd edn, Oxford University Press.

noun translations given with gender

contextualizations in square brackets

headword

phrasal verbs at end of entry

grammaticalcategories

meaning signpostsin parentheses

senses within grammaticalcategories

swung dash replaces headword

phonetics

contextualization after verb = object

contextualization before verb = subject

register Informal very informal vulgar or taboo

That’s all for this week.Thank You.