HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized
dictionary A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically (or by radical and stroke for ideographic languages), which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologie ...
used to
translate Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transl ...
words A word is a basic element of language that carries an objective or practical meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of what a word is, there is no conse ...
or
phrase In syntax and grammar, a phrase is a group of words or singular word acting as a grammatical unit. For instance, the English expression "the very happy squirrel" is a noun phrase which contains the adjective phrase "very happy". Phrases can consi ...
s from one
language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be ''
bidirectional Bidirectional may refer to: * Bidirectional, a roadway that carries traffic moving in opposite directions * Bi-directional vehicle, a tram or train or any other vehicle that can be controlled from either end and can move forward or backward with e ...
'', allowing translation to and from both languages. Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the
part of speech In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are as ...
,
gender Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to femininity and masculinity and differentiating between them. Depending on the context, this may include sex-based social structures (i.e. gender roles) and gender identity. Most culture ...
, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word. Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.


History

The Roman Emperor
Claudius Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus (; 1 August 10 BC – 13 October AD 54) was the fourth Roman emperor, ruling from AD 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, Claudius was born to Drusus and Antonia Minor ...
(10 BCE – 54 CE) is known to have compiled an Etruscan-Latin dictionary, now lost. One substantial bilingual dictionary was the Mahāvyutpatti. The Mahāvyutpatti (Wylie: ''Bye-brtag-tu rtogs-par byed-pa chen-po''), ''The Great Volume of Precise Understanding'' or ''Essential Etymology'', was compiled in
Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa people, ...
during the late eighth to early ninth centuries CE, providing a dictionary composed of thousands of
Sanskrit Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
and
Tibetan Tibetan may mean: * of, from, or related to Tibet * Tibetan people, an ethnic group * Tibetan language: ** Classical Tibetan, the classical language used also as a contemporary written standard ** Standard Tibetan, the most widely used spoken diale ...
terms designed as means to provide standardised
Buddhist texts Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts ...
in Tibetan, and is included as part of the Tibetan Tangyur (Toh. 4346). Dictionaries from
Hebrew Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
and
Aramaic The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
into medieval
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
were composed in the
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
an
Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
communities in the 10th century CE. These were used for understanding and teaching the
Talmud The Talmud (; he, , Talmūḏ) is the central text of Rabbinic Judaism and the primary source of Jewish religious law ('' halakha'') and Jewish theology. Until the advent of modernity, in nearly all Jewish communities, the Talmud was the ce ...
and other Jewish texts.


Challenges

The most important challenge for practical and theoretical lexicographers is to define the functions of a bilingual dictionary. A bilingual dictionary works to help users translate texts from one language into another or to help users understand foreign-language texts. In such situations users will require the dictionary to contain different types of data that have been specifically selected for the function in question. If the function is understanding foreign-language texts the dictionary will contain foreign-language entry words and native-language definitions, which have been written so that they can be understood by the intended user groups. If the dictionary is intended to help translate texts, it will need to include not only equivalents but also collocations and phrases translated into the relevant target language. It has also been shown that specialized translation dictionaries for learners should include data that help users translate difficult syntactical structures as well as language-specific genre conventions. In standard lexicographic terminology, a bilingual dictionary definition provides a "translation equivalent" – "An expression from a language which has the same meaning as, or can be used in a similar context to, one from another language, and can therefore be used to translate it." The British lexicographer Robert Ilson gives example definitions from the '' Collins-Robert French-English English-French Dictionary''. Since French ''chien'' = English ''dog'' and ''dog'' = ''chien'', ''chien'' and ''dog'' are translation equivalents; but since '' garde champêtre'' = ''rural policeman'' and ''rural policeman'' is not included in the English-French dictionary, they are not culturally equivalent.
Both phrases can be understood reasonably well from their constituents and have fairly obvious contrasts with ''garde urbain'' in French or with ''urban policeman'' in English. But ''garde champêtre'' has a specific unpredictable contrast within the lexical system of French: it contrasts with ''gendarme''. Both are policemen. But a gendarme is a member of a national police force that is technically part of the French Army whereas a ''garde champêtre'' is employed by a local commune. ''Rural policeman'' has no such contrast.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of creating a bilingual dictionary is the fact that
lexeme A lexeme () is a unit of lexical meaning that underlies a set of words that are related through inflection. It is a basic abstract unit of meaning, a unit of morphological analysis in linguistics that roughly corresponds to a set of forms take ...
s or words cover more than one area of meaning, but these multiple meanings don't correspond to a single word in the target language. For example, in
English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ...
, a ticket can provide entrance to a movie theater, authorize a bus or train ride, or can be given to you by a police officer for exceeding the posted speed limit. In Spanish these three meanings are not covered by one word as in English, but rather there are several options: boleto or entrada and infracción/multa, and in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
with billet or ticket and procès-verbal, or in
German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...
by Eintrittskarte or Fahrkarte and Mahnung/Bußgeldbescheid. Recently, an automatic method for the disambiguation of the entries of bilingual dictionaries has been proposed that makes use of specific kinds of graphs. As a result, translations in each entry of the dictionary are assigned the specific
sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. (For example, in the human body, the brain which is part of the central nervous system re ...
(i.e., meaning) they refer to. Open-source software for generating bilingual dictionaries automatically is also available, such as th
ApertiumBidixGen
project.


Usage

To mitigate the problem of one word having multiple meanings and its translation having multiple, but not necessarily corresponding meanings, the user should perform a reverse lookup. In the above-mentioned example in English and Spanish of the word ticket, after finding that ticket is translated into ''boleto'' and ''infracción'' in the English–Spanish dictionary, both of those Spanish words can be looked up in the Spanish-English section to help to identify which one has the meaning being sought. Reverse lookups can usually be performed faster with dictionary programs and online dictionaries.


Formats

Bilingual dictionaries are available in a number of formats, and often include a grammar reference and usage examples.(For instance Yadgar Sindhi to English Dictionary)Yadgar Sindhi to English Dictionary - The Sindh Times feb. 02, 2004
/ref> * Printed dictionaries – Printed dictionaries range from small pocket-sized editions to large, comprehensive multi-volume works. * Handheld electronic dictionaries (also: Pocket electronic dictionaries or PEDs) – Electronic dictionaries are small devices that receive input via a miniature
keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Mu ...
,
speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and technologies that enable the recognition and translation of spoken language into text by computers with the ...
or a scanning device that reads printed text, and outputs the translation on a small LCD screen or speaks the translation audibly. * Dictionary programs –
software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consist ...
that allows words or phrases to be input and translated on computers and smart phones. * Online dictionaries –
Online dictionaries An online dictionary is a dictionary that is accessible via the Internet through a web browser. They can be made available in a number of ways: free, free with a paid subscription for extended or more professional content, or a paid-only service. ...
similar to dictionary programs, these are often easy to search, but not always free to use, and in some cases lack the accuracy (particularly in open collaborative dictionaries), or scope of printed and electronic dictionaries. * Visual dictionaries – A visual dictionary is a printed dictionary that relies primarily on
illustration An illustration is a decoration, interpretation or visual explanation of a text, concept or process, designed for integration in print and digital published media, such as posters, flyers, magazines, books, teaching materials, animations, video ...
s to provide the user with a reliable way of identifying the correct translation. Visual dictionaries are often
multi-lingual Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
rather than bilingual—instead of containing translations between two languages they often cover four or more languages.


Distribution

Bilingual dictionaries are available for nearly every combination of popular languages. They also often exist between language pairs where one language is popular and the other isn't. Bilingual dictionaries between two uncommon languages are much less likely to exist.


Multilingual dictionaries

Multilingual dictionaries are closely related to bilingual dictionaries. In a multilingual dictionary, a person looks up a word or phrase in one language and is presented with the translation in several languages. Multilingual dictionaries can be arranged alphabetically or words can be grouped by topic. When grouped by topic, it is common for a multilingual dictionary to be illustrated.


Publishers

There are many publishers and manufacturers of both printed and electronic bilingual dictionaries. For example: *
Ectaco ECTACO Inc. (East-Coast Trading American Company Incorporated) is a US-based developer and manufacturer of hardware and software products for speech recognition and electronic translation. They also make jetBook eBook readers. Speech recognit ...
* Velazquez Press * Franklin Electronic Publishers *
HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...
*
Langenscheidt Langenscheidt () is a German publishing company that specializes in language reference works. In addition to publishing monolingual dictionaries, Langenscheidt also publishes bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books. Langenscheidt has la ...
* Larousse *
Merriam-Webster Merriam-Webster, Inc. is an American company that publishes reference books and is especially known for its dictionaries. It is the oldest dictionary publisher in the United States. In 1831, George and Charles Merriam founded the company as ...
* SYSTRAN


See also

*
Bescherelle A ''Bescherelle'' is a French language grammar reference book best known for its verb conjugations volumes. It is named in honour of the 19th-century French lexicographer and grammarian Louis-Nicolas Bescherelle (and perhaps his brother Henri ...
, a type of grammar reference book for conjugating verbs * Babel Fish (website) *
Computer-Assisted Translation Computer-aided translation (CAT), also referred to as computer-assisted translation or computer-aided human translation (CAHT), is the use of software to assist a human translator in the translation Translation is the communication of ...
*
Foreign language writing aid A foreign language writing aid is a computer program or any other instrument that assists a non-native language user (also referred to as a foreign language learner) in writing decently in their target language. Assistive operations can be classifie ...
* Lexical markup framework *
Machine Translation Machine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT (not to be confused with computer-aided translation, machine-aided human translation or interactive translation), is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates ...
* Mariano Velazquez de la Cadena (Spanish-English bilingual dictionary author) *
Parallel text A parallel text is a text placed alongside its translation or translations. Parallel text alignment is the identification of the corresponding sentences in both halves of the parallel text. The Loeb Classical Library and the Clay Sanskrit Libr ...
* Phrase book * List of online dictionaries


References


External links

{{Authority control Lexicography