bilingual dictionaries and equivalence
TRANSCRIPT
Micky Vale
PhD student
Bilingual Dictionaries and Equivalence
Dictionaries: format and purpose
• Purpose
• General purpose: reference tool
• Specific purpose, e.g. technical; learners dictionary
• Wider (ideological) purposes: language documentation,
language maintenance and revitalisation, standardisation,
status enhancing
• Format
• Monolingual
• Bilingual
• Bilingualised
• Electronic: ‘hybrid’ (may include other information
traditionally found in e.g. a thesaurus or encyclopedia)
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Sign language dictionaries
• Ideological purposes
• Aimed mainly at hearing learners
• Title often suggests a monolingual resource (e.g.
Dictionary of New Zealand Sign Language)
• Format is in fact bilingual / multilingual: signs matched
with English (other spoken/written language) words
• Electronic format allows for videos and additional material
(e.g. example sentences from corpus) and for some
bidirectionality.
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Equivalence in bilingual dictionaries:
why is it an issue?
• Dictionary users generally expect equivalence, when in
reality complete equivalence between L1 and L2 is quite
rare.
• For learners, matching new L2 vocabulary to L1 terms is an
effective way to access meaning, BUT..
• access to further linguistic, cultural and encyclopedic
knowledge is needed to clarify differences
• Bilingual dictionaries traditionally do not provide this kind
of knowledge, or provide it in ways that are difficult for
‘naïve’ dictionary users to access.
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Dimensions of non-equivalence Duval (1991)
• Signifier and signified
• Denotation and connotation
• Extension and comprehension
• Proverbs and idioms
Atkins & Rundell (2008)
• Semantic content
• Collocational context
• Vocabulary type
• Message
• Function
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Examples from NZSL Online
deaf, deaf person, deafness
flashing lights
TTY, teleprinter, teletypewriter
Sumner, Van Asch
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Extension and comprehension:
classifiers
http://nzsl.vuw.ac.nz/signs/3067
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Function words
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Through, go through
over
Synonymy:
search results for “surprised”
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Where to from here?
• Find out more about users of the existing online
Dictionary of NZSL
• What is the purpose most users use the dictionary for?
• Are these equivalence issues problematic in real-life tasks?
Explore what further information and metalinguistic
labelling could be provided
• Focus on categories where non-equivalence is most likely,
i.e. culture-specific signs and idiomatic expressions
• Definitional phrases in NZSL
Measure the impact on learners of different dictionary
entry formats
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References Atkins, B. T. S., & Rundell, M. (2008). The Oxford Guide to
Practical Lexicography. (p. 552). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Cablitz, G. H. (2011). Documenting Cultural Knowledge in Dictionaries of Endangered Languages. International Journal of Lexicography, 24, 446–462. doi:10.1093/ijl/ecr017
Duval, A. (2008). Equivalence in Bilingual Dictionaries. In T. Fontenelle (Ed.), Practical Lexicography: A Reader (pp. 273 – 282). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning Vocabulary in Another Language (p. 477). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Zwitserlood, I. (2010). Sign language lexicography in the early 21st century and a recently published dictionary of Sign Language of the Netherlands. International Journal of Lexicography, 23(4), 443–476. doi:10.1093/ijl/ecq031