| DAN Ordbøger SPA Diccionarios |
contents
Introduction | Basic features of dictionaries | The translating process and dictionaries | How dictionaries may help translators | Research potential
Translators often look for help from diverse sources when translating texts, whether fictional, non-fictional, technical, or non-technical. The main reason for such consultations is the lack of information needed to properly complete the translation task at hand. This need for information may be related to various matters such as language issues, factual issues, cultural issues, terminological issues, and translation skills. In order to satisfy their need for information, translators may decide to consult dictionaries, which are studied in the discipline of lexicography.
There are different types of dictionary, and users of dictionaries have different ideas of the type of help dictionaries can offer. Users and lexicographers have traditionally tended to agree that bilingual dictionaries are the ones to consult when translating because they relate the vocabulary of two languages together. This perception is not without problems, e.g., because different dictionaries are targeted to different user groups with due regard to their needs, competences, and skills. Recent lexicographic literature, e.g., Tarp (2004) and Fuertes-Olivera, Tarp & Sepstrup (2018), argue that the theoretical and practical bases of dictionaries for translation should be reconsidered. Following this line, Giacomini (2018: 297) explains that lexicographic theory “does not distinguish between functions of bilingual dictionaries […] and it does not account for the fact that a dictionary for translation is not necessarily a bilingual dictionary” (emphasis in original). So what is the relation between dictionaries and translation? To answer this question, a brief outline of some fundamentals of lexicography will first be given. Then the translation process will be discussed to identify data types to include in dictionaries, followed by a discussion of how dictionaries may provide help when translating. Finally, potentials for further research will be indicated.
Basic features of dictionaries
Dictionaries are human artifacts, so it is possible to describe and classify them in various ways. Any description and classification of dictionaries depend on the approach and purpose of this activity, including subjective and objective criteria. For example, formal criteria include the range of coverage and nomenclature, while structural criteria include the presentation of dictionary articles and the arrangement of articles and their constituent data, and functional criteria include the type of help dictionaries provide in various user situations. Users may have their own personal views of the dictionaries they consult, and researchers may have domain-specific, theoretical views of the dictionaries they study; and both groups of people are influenced by their experiential framework of the world they are part of. One result of this is that there are many ways in which to describe and classify dictionaries.
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Edited volume on lexicography [Source] |
Edited volumes on lexicography, e.g., The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography, are one type of sources from which to gain an overview of the practical and theoretical work on existing and potential dictionaries. There is no single, official definition of the concept of dictionary, but Hartmann & James (2001: 41) propose the following definition: “A type of REFERENCE WORK which presents the vocabulary of a language in alphabetic order, usually with explanations of meanings” (emphasis in original). This definition represents what may be called entities, i.e., individual, real objects within the domain of lexicography, and they are instances of a class or type. According to Bergman (2018: 132), classes and types are not individual, real objects but constructs of thought. Following this line of argument, an examination of The Routledge Handbook of Lexicography shows that dictionaries come in many varieties, such as printed dictionaries, online dictionaries, abridged dictionaries, language dictionaries, specialized dictionaries, dictionaries of linguistics, dialect dictionaries, monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, translation dictionaries, accounting dictionaries, wine dictionaries, thesauri, dictionaries of verb patterns, dictionaries of economics, learners’ dictionaries, sign language dictionaries, encyclopedic dictionaries, frequency dictionaries, etymological dictionaries, collocation dictionaries, business dictionaries, synonym dictionaries, reverse dictionaries, dictionaries of rhymes, and dictionaries of science. This short list contains varieties of dictionaries and shows how different they are from each other; they vary in format, size, scope, content, use, and user group. The label dictionary is not a very informative example of the concept of lexicographic products, but the referential information contained in the adjectives and nouns in the above list indicates that the label dictionary will represent an individual entity or perhaps several types of entities.
Descriptions and classifications based on formal and structural criteria are not without problems. One disadvantage is that the dictionary types mentioned in the preceding paragraph may overlap to a considerable extent thereby making the typology somewhat uninformative. Bilingual and multilingual dictionaries may contain terms and their equivalents in two or more languages and thus also be translation dictionaries. On the other hand, dictionaries covering two or more languages may contain in-depth explanations of scientific concepts and thus be encyclopedic, language, or specialized dictionaries. Similarly, accounting and business dictionaries cover the disciplines of accounting and business, and they may do so in one, two or more languages, and may or may not be translation dictionaries. Moreover, bilingual translation dictionaries may contain encyclopedic data, linguistic data, and collocations. Finally, any of the dictionary types listed above may be abridged, printed, or online dictionaries. Formal and structural criteria for describing and classifying dictionaries may be practical in various situations, but to understand the nature of lexicographic products better the introduction of functional criteria may be helpful.
When studying dictionaries in relation to translation, the ontological position adopted should be clear. Dictionaries are the object of lexicography and thus the object to be analyzed, designed, examined, or investigated. Based on the lexicographic literature, it seems safe to say that a dictionary is not “just a dictionary”. Tarp (2004: 37) points out that two theories exist in lexicography and the first, the contemplative theory, focusses on existing dictionaries and their use, while the second, the transformative theory, also focusses on existing dictionaries and their use but includes guidelines for making dictionaries targeted to provide help in practical situations (functions) as well. If the focus is on the function(s) of dictionaries, a dictionary may be treated as a lexicographic product which has been designed to fulfil one or more functions, which contains data that have been selected because they help to fulfil its function(s), and which has structures linking the data into the task of fulfilling its function(s). Dictionaries may, therefore, be described as lexicographic utility products that provide specific types of help to specific types of users in specific types of user situations in the real (i.e., extra-lexicographic) world. This description contains several variables that merit consideration.
One variable is the type of intended user and the identification of user competences. User profiling will help lexicographers identify which types of data they need to incorporate in their dictionaries to provide assistance where user competences are insufficient. Since it is impossible to profile each individual potential user of a dictionary, one way in which to profile dictionary users is to adopt the type of user who Weber (1949: 89-90) calls an “ideal type”, meaning that it is an intellectual construct identified by specific characteristics that are empirically observable. Dictionary users come from all walks of life, vary in age, and are experts or lay persons, but user competences and skills to consider for individual dictionaries include the following questions: Which language is their native language? At what level do they master their native language? At what level do they master a foreign language? What is the level of their general cultural and factual knowledge in the relevant culture(s)? At what level do they master the special subject field(s) in question in their own culture? At what level do they master the special subject field(s) in question in the other culture(s)? At what level do they master the corresponding LSP (language for specific purposes) in their native language? At what level do they master the corresponding LSP in the foreign language? At what level do they master the production of texts, their structure and genre conventions in their native language? At what level do they master the production of texts, their structure and genre conventions in a foreign language? At what level do they master the production of texts, their structure and genre conventions in the subject field(s) in question in their own culture? At what level do they master the production of texts, their structure and genre conventions in the subject field(s) in the other culture(s)? At what level do they master translation theories and strategies? How extensive is their experience in translating between the languages in question? (Nielsen 2018: 75-76). Some or all of these questions may help lexicographers plan, design, and make dictionaries for translation as well as help lexicographers and users evaluate such dictionaries.
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| Dictionary providing help to acquire factual knowledge [Source] | Dictionary providing help to acquire linguistic knowledge [Source] |
Another variable to consider is dictionary functions as these are directly related to user situations. A dictionary function may be defined as the satisfaction of specific types of lexicographically relevant need of specific types of potential user in specific types of real-world situation. Some dictionary functions attempt to meet user needs arising from communicative situations and are called communicative functions. For instance, dictionaries may be designed to provide help to produce texts in the native or a foreign language, to provide help to translate texts into or from a foreign language, and to provide help to understand texts in the native or a foreign language. Other dictionary functions attempt to fulfil user needs arising from cognitive, or knowledge-related, situations and are referred to as cognitive functions. For example, dictionaries can provide help to acquire general factual knowledge about something in the native or a foreign culture, and to provide help to acquire specific linguistic knowledge about the native or a foreign language.
Lexicographers should give thought to the number of functions their dictionaries have. The more functions dictionaries have the more difficult it is likely to be for lexicographers to prepare dictionaries that satisfy all user needs. However, lexicographers may make dictionaries that help users understand texts as well as help users acquire general knowledge about certain matters by including definitions. In addition, the functions to provide help to write texts in a foreign language and to provide help to translate texts into the same foreign language may be combined in one dictionary. For the present purposes, focus will be on dictionaries that can provide help in translation situations, and this leads to an examination of a third variable, i.e., the data to be included in dictionaries.
The translating process and dictionaries
As shown in the previous section, dictionary typologies are not very informative and may provide little guidance for users who are looking for help in extra-lexicographic situations such as translation. Until recently, researchers tended to equate bilingual dictionaries with translation dictionaries without much consideration of other possible functions that bilingual dictionaries can have. As argued by Giacomini (2018: 285), “this point of view has long been taken for granted in most metalexicographic literature, among others in the field of dictionary typology”. Furthermore, the above discussion of dictionary types indicates that many types of dictionaries are relevant for consultation and consulted by professional and student translators during the translation process. This means that taking the point of departure in formally and structurally based typologies will not lead to an optimal examination and discussion of dictionaries for translation because this approach places the dictionary in its center with translation as a supporting element. A functional approach, on the other hand, will have translation at its center and regard dictionaries as media through which lexicographers provide help to translators at one or more stages in the extra-lexicographic translation process. Any dictionary consultation by translators will depend on the language, factual, cultural, and translation competences and skills of translators as well as the languages translated from/into. In this light, the following discussion focusses on the translation process and how dictionaries intended for translation may be of help.
Translating is a rather complex activity that is typically based on texts, which can be written or spoken. Furthermore, a translation process will often consist of a planning, an execution, and a finalization stage. At first glance, the execution stage is the only one in which dictionaries may assist translators as this is where proper translation activities take place. Dictionaries may also be relevant in the finalization stage in which actors other than translators work with the target text, as editors and proofreaders will typically be involved in finalizing texts for publication, and these actors may consult dictionaries for help. In addition, translators may be involved in post-editing machine translated texts. Finally, when computer-aided translation (CAT) or machine translation (MT) is used or contemplated, writers and translators may need to pre-edit such texts to make them easier to translate into several languages. Writers and translators may decide to consult dictionaries in this pre-editing phase to find help to facilitate the electronic translation process.
The two words data and information are often used interchangeably. However, Wiegand (2000: 22-25) and Nielsen (2008: 175-176) argue that dictionaries do not contain information but data that users can convert into information through a mental process and thereby satisfy their needs for help. This distinction is relevant when examining dictionaries for translation because it sheds light on the way in which users read and understand what is available in source and target texts as well as in dictionaries. This means that dictionaries designed to provide help for translation should contain a variety of data types, such as definitions, inflectional paradigms, collocations, and audio-visual data.
Dictionaries for translation will need to contain several types of data that enable users to translate texts adequately. The general purpose of such dictionaries is to help users to deal with conceptual, grammatical, syntactic, stylistic, and terminological issues during the translation process. There are several detailed descriptions of the execution stage of translation and Newmark (1988: 11-37), Bell (1991: 20-21), and Gerzymisch-Arbogast (2008: 42-45) provide a generally accepted description of an execution process that includes a decoding, or reception, phase, where translators discover semantic meaning and extra-linguistic sense from source texts, a transfer phase, where translators transfer the deduced meaning and sense from one language to another through comparative analyses, and an encoding, or (re)production, phase, where translators formulate and produce target texts.
In the decoding phase, translators proceed to understand the substantive message of source texts to render their contents in another language. Semantic meaning is the meaning of lexical units in linguistic systems while extra-linguistic sense is usually made of terms, which are lexical units within extra-linguistic systems and refer to concepts and practical matters. By analyzing source texts, translators will be able to identify genres and sub-genres within domains, which may help them understand the function(s) of the texts and guide them towards the correct solutions during the transfer and encoding phases. The transfer phase is where translators decide how the meaning of decoded source texts can best be moved from source language to target language. This may involve specific translation strategies related to the function and genre of source texts as well as the identification of those target-language words, terms, and concepts that match those of the source language. Furthermore, this comparability analysis may reveal instances in which language patterns, cultural and knowledge systems do not match, in whole or in part.
In the encoding phase, translators engage in text production often involving a planning, a drafting, and a revising, or editing, phase. Dictionaries do not usually provide help in the planning phase, as this typically depends on the translation brief, and dictionaries for translation should therefore be useful in the drafting and the revising or editing phases. For instance, Marsen (2013: 261-262) shows that draft texts should be revised and edited, and then followed by proofreading. Dictionaries for translation may, therefore, be regarded as information tools that can help translators decode source texts linguistically, factually, culturally, and terminologically as well as draft, revise and edit target-language texts.
The tasks of encoding, transferring and (re)producing can be described in various ways. One description of the elements addressed in the execution stage is the three-level approach proposed by Gerzymisch-Arbogast (2008). At the macro-level, translators work with background factual knowledge (relating to textual and non-textual matters), paragraphs, and larger units of text, which facilitates the understanding of source-text elements, identifying cohesive elements, and comparing conceptual systems and relations between the two cultures involved in the decoding and transfer phases. The medio-level focusses on how thematic progression is structured in texts (theme-rheme), semantic networks (isotopy), and the order of information (coherence); and theme-rheme progression and isotopy contribute to coherence as coherence indicators. At the micro-level, translators work with words, terms, collocations, phrases, clauses, sentences, and textual conventions (Gerzymisch-Arbogast 2008: 15-16, 30-39). The micro-level is particularly relevant to dictionary consultation because translators need help at this level when translating from or into a foreign language. For example, the relevance of the micro-level is examined by Bowker (2012: 381), who explains that translators require skills and knowledge about various aspects of target-text production, including knowledge of spelling, grammar, varieties, style, collocations, phrases, and pragmatics. It follows from the above discussion that dictionaries for translation should contain data that help translators decode, transfer, and encode texts and that those data should relate to the macro-, medio-, and micro-levels of translation.
How dictionaries may help translators
Translation and lexicography are two disciplines that can work together in theory and practice, as dictionaries for translation are reference tools that can help users with transferring discourse from one language to another. Lexicographers have traditionally tended to equate translation dictionaries with bilingual dictionaries, and treating bilingual dictionaries as translation dictionaries may seem logical. However, the above discussion shows that not all bilingual dictionaries may be intended for translation, or are not useful for translation, and that dictionaries other than bilingual ones may be helpful for translation. As indicated by, e.g., Tarp (2004), Nielsen (2010), Fontenelle (2016), and Giacomini (2018) literature treating bilingual dictionaries as the only ones for translation has tended to focus research and practice on equivalence and equivalents. There is no doubt that equivalence is important for translation, but one risk of focussing on this aspect is that lexicographers may end up providing help to translators in a limited part of the translation process, e.g., terms in specialized translation, even though researchers have found that terms make up less than 20-25% of specialized texts (Gerzymisch-Arbogast 2008: 17). Since they translate entire texts, translators need help with more than terms and words and thus require more assistance from dictionaries for translation. During the last decade or so, lexicographers have begun to include more of the translation process into their research and practice, showing that translation studies has impacted lexicography in interesting ways.
The interrelationship between translation and dictionaries may be explained by examining the execution stage. This examination involves possible information needs of translators in the analysis, transfer, and (re)production phases as well as at the macro-, medio-, and micro-levels of translation introduced above. For practical reasons, the discussion below will mainly follow the phases in the execution stage but still acknowledging that translating is an iterative process, i.e., a dynamic and flexible process where the translator goes back and forth between individual steps and looks at the progress on an ongoing basis.
When they analyze source texts, translators may be said to engage in hermeneutic exercises. This means that they should decipher, interpret, and understand the source text to discover its message(s) and the way(s) in which these are communicated. During this discovery process, translators may find that they have insufficient knowledge about the underlying fictional, non-fictional, technical, or non-technical world and consult dictionaries to acquire knowledge and make this knowledge transparent. At this macro-level, the source text must make sense and hang together logically (although the analysis may reveal that the source text does not make sense and does not hang together logically), which may require general or subject-specific knowledge that helps translators to identify and understand semantic networks. To achieve transparency, translators may consult monolingual dictionaries treating the same language as the source texts, in particular dictionaries containing definitions. However, bilingual dictionaries may also contain definitions as illustrated in Figure 1.
Spanish translators who work from English into Spanish may find this figure helpful not just because it contains a definition of the English entry word but also because it contains a Spanish translation equivalent that may be familiar to them. The definition and the equivalent complement each other in achieving transparency as well as provide translators with a word they can use in the Spanish target text.
The challenge of understanding source texts may be caused by polysemous words with related meanings. Figure 2 shows how dictionaries may provide help to interpret source texts by providing definitions of polysemous words (or homographs).
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biannual Biannual means half-yearly, i.e. every six months. biannual |
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Figure 1. Excerpt from Diccionario de Contabilidad Inglés-Español |
Figure 2. Excerpt from Diccionario de Contabilidad Inglés-Español |
Figure 3. Excerpt from Diccionario de Contabilidad Inglés-Español |
The homographs in Figure 2 show how dictionaries may provide help to understand the underlying world of source texts, first, by splitting them into two different word classes and, second, by presenting both definitions and translation equivalents. Words and terms are not only source-text elements that make understanding difficult at the macro-level but sometimes also at the micro-level, which is concerned with words and elements larger than words up to sentences. At this level, collocations and phrases may be non-transparent, so dictionaries for translation should assist translators in understanding such text elements, as shown in Figure 3.
Instead of defining or explaining the meaning of the English word combinations in Figure 3, the dictionary provides Spanish translations. The definition of the entry word combined with the translations of the English phrases help translators understand the meaning of source texts, and the translations may be used directly in target texts.
The analyses of source texts ensure that translators have understood the texts and are now in control of them, i.e., they have identified all source-text elements that need to be addressed in the transfer phase. Broadly speaking, the transfer phase consists of a contrastive analysis in which language, factual, knowledge, conventional, and cultural text features are compared for translation purposes. This process includes a compatibility analysis of source-text and potential target-text features from the macro-, medio-, and micro-levels with a focus on the linguistic resources in the target language (Gerzymisch-Arbogast 2008: 13). Dictionaries may assist translators with some of these issues, such as collocations and phrases that need to be structured differently, as in the list below showing different syntactic structures allowed in selected languages in clauses with the same meaning.
Danish: Er parterne nået til enighed…
German: Haben die Parteien eine Einigung erzielt…
English: Where the parties have reached agreement…
French: Lorsque les parties sont parvenues à un accord…
Spanish: Si las partes han alcanzado un acuerdo…
As indicated above, dictionary users, and by extension translators, have different skills and competences, and especially learners and lay persons may benefit from help relating to syntactic differences. The clauses listed above indicate that translators need to know how to translate such syntactic structures, especially when the target language does not have the same options. For example, Danish and German allow the use of inversion in some clauses, and the Danish clause literally reads, “Are the parties in agreement”, while the German clause literally reads, “Have the parties reached agreement”, despite both being conditional clauses and not questions. When translating into languages that do not allow such structures, translators may need help from dictionaries so they can produce translations like the last three in the list above, where the languages require the use of conjunctional clauses to introduce conditions (see also Nielsen 2010: 74-76). This help may be provided by phrases in bilingual dictionaries from source to target language (as in Example 3) or in monolingual target-language dictionaries. Furthermore, example sentences in dictionaries can be used to show or translate words, terms, language structures, and genre conventions, as argued by Jacobsen, Manley & Pedersen (1991: 2787): “Examples, if judiciously selected, can demonstrate collocational, stylistic, syntactic, morphological, and cultural features of words and phrases”. For a further discussion of example sentences in bilingual dictionaries, see Nielsen (2014).
As the previous discussion shows, dictionaries may be consulted in one or more translation stages and phases. One type of dictionary that can assist translators in the decoding as well as the transfer phases are bi- and multilingual picture dictionaries. Such lexicographic products use illustrations as the main source of providing data supplemented by words or terms in two or more languages addressed to things in the pictures. Picture dictionaries are often arranged into themes, for example, times and figures, person and private life, food and drink, town and citizen, games and sports, and trade and tools. The pictures show specific things that may help translators understand source texts and make comparative analyses, and the words in two or more languages help translators find adequate translations for target texts. In addition to picture dictionaries, illustrations are also used in illustrated dictionaries in which pictures are merely supplementary. Printed dictionaries include drawings and still pictures, while electronic dictionaries may also include audio material and video footage as well as links to relevant webpages, which may all assist translators in the decoding, transfer, and encoding phases.
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| An example of a page from a monolingual Ikonet dictionary [Source] |
During the transfer phase, translators may find that language, cultural, and knowledge systems require adaptation of source-text material and dictionaries can sometimes help with this. Collocations may have to be adapted in verb + noun and adjective + noun constellations because the languages use different verbs and adjectives to express the same message. For instance, the Danish collocation “nedsætte et udvalg” corresponds to the English collocation “set up a committee” as one of its possible translations. The Danish verb literally means “set down”, indicating two different perspectives in relation to the same activity. Similar challenges may arise in connection with translation strategies at sentence level as in the following example. A shop window may display a sign saying “Se habla español” to attract customers, whereas a similar sign attracting English-speaking customers would read “English spoken”. Here the first sign uses an impersonal pronoun, and the second sign has no pronoun, reflecting different ways in which to express the same message. Ideally, dictionaries for translation should provide help with these challenges in collocations and phrases presented in the source language with their translations as well as in examples and their translations.
Syntagmatic data found in collocations, phrases and examples may be related to entry words or translation equivalents. When translating for instance into English, professionals need to be aware of geographical language variants, e.g., British (UK) and American (US) English, and geographical variants may also be found in French, German, and Spanish, to name a few languages. Dictionaries can make translators aware of the available variants and different structures, as illustrated in Figure 4.
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Figure 4. Extract from Danish-English Accounting Dictionary |
The data in Figure 4 show translators that there are two English variants (fair presentation and true and fair view) for the Danish entry word (retvisende billede). Furthermore, the first Danish phrase contains a noun modified by a prepositional phrase (kravet om et retvisende billede) and the dictionary presents two possible translations using different language structures. The British (UK) phrase has a similar structure (the requirement of a true and fair view) as the Danish, whereas the second English translation contains a compound noun, as this is the appropriate structure in American English (US) and international financial reporting English (IAS/IFRS). The dictionary explicitly informs translators of the different structures as well as the different translation equivalents available.
For the (re)production, or encoding, phase, translators may benefit from one or more of the data types described above. In addition, both mono- and bilingual dictionaries can contain grammar-related data relevant for producing target texts, such as inflectional paradigms. These paradigms may be presented in coded ways using abbreviations that are either easy or difficult to interpret by users, or in unabbreviated form as shown in Figure 5.
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| Figure 5. Extract from English-Danish Accounting Dictionary |
The use of the grammar data shown in Figure 5 is two-fold. First, translators producing English target texts get clear help in inflecting the noun, as all possible inflections of the noun are written in full and thus lend themselves to easy comprehension and practical use. Second, translators producing a Danish target text get clear help in the same way, which indicates that some dictionaries can be useful in translating in both directions. Finally, translators are made aware that the English word is uncountable, while the data show that the Danish translation equivalent is countable. Whether grammar-related data are beneficial to or needed by translators depends on their competences and skills, but learners and lay people would be likely to find such data helpful.
Finally, a translation element at the microstructure that has not received much attention in lexicography is genre conventions. Furthermore, the (non-)translation of such conventions depends on the purpose or skopos specified in the translation brief, as the translation strategy adopted governs the outcome. Translation strategies can be source or target language-oriented, and translators will have to decide whether, and if so how, the adopted strategy will affect the transfer and production phases. What is more, genre conventions are highly culture-specific, so not all dictionary users will be familiar with relevant conventions in the target language, or in the source language for that matter. Nielsen (2000) provides a tentative discussion of how translators may cross cultural boundaries in relation to genre conventions and how dictionaries may provide help in such situations. Even though the paper primarily examines specific genre conventions in legal texts, the translation and lexicographic principles are relevant for translation dictionaries generally.
This article has mainly focused on what may be called stand-alone dictionaries, i.e., dictionaries that are not integrated in software. However, further research may reveal whether the above practices and principles are equally relevant for dictionaries that are integrated into translation software.
Nielsen (2000) provides only a small contribution to translating genre conventions and how dictionaries can assist translators, so further research into this may result in new theoretical and practical discoveries related to such conventions and the treatment of translation strategies in dictionaries.
The study of dictionaries used in connection with translation has traditionally focused on translation from a foreign language into the native language of users. Going forward, research into the use of dictionaries by professional translators and translation students who translate from their native language into one or more foreign languages would benefit both theoretical and practical lexicography. In the case of translation students, this kind of research may focus on the use of dictionaries in connection with regular course work or in connection with translation exams.
Finally, Tarp (2004: 36) finds that the optimal translation dictionary should “be a two-way dictionary or, at least, include two word lists, one bilingual and another monolingual.” Future research may reveal whether a network of electronic (online or integrated) mono- and bilingual dictionaries will be a viable solution, e.g., because translators can click on words in a bilingual dictionary and be taken direct to a monolingual dictionary with different but related data, or vice versa.







