Principles of lexicography

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Principles of lexicography

• How to edit a dictionary/glossary

Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere
Università di Bari
Corso di Laurea Magistrale in Traduzione
Specialistica I Anno, II anno
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Principles of lexicography

• Reference B.T. Sue Atkins and Michael Rundell,
  The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography, 2008,
  Oxford University Press Oxford linguistics.

MAIN AIM
CREATION OF A DICTIONARY - GLOSSARY
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Principles of lexicography

• Elements involved in the creation of a dictionary

Starting point
Evidence Linguistic Data
INTERMEDIATE STEPS
INTERMEDIATE STEPS
Technology corpora and corpus querying Software
Linguistic Theory
Users needs, users skills
Technology databases, etc.
Is it the most important for our needs?
DICTIONARY
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Principles of lexicography

• A merely practical approach. Few theoretical
  elements are needed. Actually, the practical side
  of this module is to create something that deals
  with pragmatic aspects of language ? creating a
  bilingual glossary/dictionary for
  scientific/technical purposes.

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Principles of lexicography
Dictionary types and dictionary users
Birth of a dictionary
Dictionary types
Dictionary users
Tailoring entry to users
Know your users
Editorial plan
Dictionary properties
Monolinguals
User properties
Bilinguals
Classifying dictionaries
User research
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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

Properties

• The kind of dictionary
• a. Monolingual
• b. Bilingual

UNIDIRECTIONAL (ENG ITA ONLY) BIDIRECTIONAL
(ENG ITA ITA ENG)
c. Multilingual
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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• The kind of dictionary
• a. General language
• b. Encyclopedic and cultural material
• c. Terminology and sublanguages
• d. Specific area of language (e.g., a dictionary
  of phrasal verbs only)

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Size
• a. Standard edition
• b. Concise edition
• c. Pocket edition
• d. Digital edition
• e. Personal edition

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Medium
• a. Print
• b. Electronic/digital
• c. Web-based

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Dictionarys organization
• a. Word to meaning (the most common)
• b. Word to meaning to word (word ? definition ?
  linking to semantically related words, e.g.
  synonyms)

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Users language(s) ? The dictionary could be
  meant for
• a. A group of users who all speak the same
  language
• b. Two or more specific groups of
  language-speakers
• c. Learners worldwide of the dictionarys
  language

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Users skills
• a. Linguists and other language professionals
• b. Literate adults
• c. School students
• d. Young children
• e. Language learners

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Principles of lexicography

• TYPES OF DICTIONARY

• Practical use of the dictionary
• a. Decoding Understanding the meaning of a
  word
• Translating from a target, foreign
  language into their own language

b. Encoding Using a word correctly
Translating a text from their own language
into a foreign language
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Principles of lexicography

• CLASSIFYING DICTIONARIES

Which categories should be chosen for our
dictionary/glossary?
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Principles of lexicography

• CLASSIFYING USERS

Types of use
? Which of these tasks do you expect users to use
the dictionary for?

• General reference purpose, such as

• Understanding unfamiliar words

• Checking spellings or pronunciations

• Doing crosswords (!)

• Studying a particular subject

- Learning a language
- Learning a specific domain of a given language
- Translating texts from a source to a target
language
- Writing essays or reports

• In their mother language

• In a language they are learning

- Preparing for a written or oral exam
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Principles of lexicography

• TAILORING ENTRIES TO USERS NEEDS

A dictionary may be created according to specific
needs (Domain, number of words, type of
dictionary, etc.)

• What about the content?
• Which headwords (and which meanings) should the
  dictionary include?
• How many of them should be needed in order to
  compile a dictionary or a glossary?
• Should it cover specialist terms? If so, which
  domains are most relevant to users?

• Issues concerning every single headword and their
  mutual interconnection
• Which information categories are most important?
• Is it useful to combine words from a grammatical
  point of view?
• Is it useful to create patterns of use
  (multi-word expressions?)
• Do they need to know about typical contexts of
  the headword?

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Principles of lexicography

• FOCUS ON A BILINGUAL DICTIONARY/GLOSSARY

The simplest bilingual dictionary to edit is a
decoding dictionary for one language group, i.e.
a dictionary destined for speakers of a single
language (the TL) who want to translate into
their own language.
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Principles of lexicography

• LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Whats the actual difference between a dictionary
and a glossary?
Lets have a look at some definitions
(Source Merriam-Webster Dictionary, online
edition _at_ www.merriam-webster.com)
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Principles of lexicography

• LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Lets have a look at some definitions
(Source Merriam-Webster Dictionary, online
edition _at_ www.merriam-webster.com)
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Principles of lexicography

• LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Lets have a look at some definitions
(Source Dizionario Italiano Garzanti, online
edition _at_ www.garzantilinguistica.it)
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Principles of lexicography

• LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Lets have a look at some definitions
(Source Dizionario Italiano Garzanti, online
edition _at_ www.garzantilinguistica.it)