The Need for an Electronic Multilingual Dictionary
The Need for an Electronic Multilingual Dictionary

Summary/Abstract: The paper analyses the issue of providing adequate equivalents in multilingual dictionaries. If equivalents are adequate, it means that: (1) the scope of meaning of one item is identical to its equivalent (cf. drive: drive a nail vs. drive a car); and (2) the collocations of the equivalents overlap. Two significant problems arise when searching for adequate equivalents: the lack of equivalents whose meanings are identical (narrower/wider meanings, partial overlap of meanings, more than equally good equivalent), and equivalents with homographs in a given language. Because such issues are difficult to resolve in a printed dictionary, we put forward some methods of addressing the problems in an electronic dictionary. The paper offers an example entry from such a dictionary, which presents a suggestion of a layout. We also took into consideration the potential problems which may appear if the entry is presented in this manner: first, one must set a limit for the description (a defined number of lexical units); second, one must avoid circularity, but at the same time also strive for an exhaustive description. Electronic dictionaries offer greater possibilities of presenting modern vocabulary and adding new classifiers (e.g. a classifier of politeness).

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