Jianhua Huang’s Lexicography and his Grand Dictionnaire Chinois–Français Contemporain (2014)

Abstract

Le Grand Dictionnaire Chinois–Français Contemporain (GDCFC) was published in China in 2014. It is at present the largest dictionary of its kind and contains a number of innovative features. To know a dictionary and its design features, it helps to know its editor and his academic work. This is especially true of this dictionary, in that dictionary-making projects in China are in most cases chief-editor-oriented. Jianhua Huang, the chief editor of the GDCFC, accumulated rich experience in lexicographical practice and spent two decades exploring all aspects of theoretical lexicography before starting to compile the dictionary. This paper first addresses Huang’s lexicography as a preparation and underpinning for the GDCFC and then examines the dictionary itself. The examination is carried out at two levels. At the macrostructural level, the focus is mainly on its coverage and headword selection, in comparison to its sole source dictionary, A Modern Chinese Dictionary (6th edn, 2012). At the microstructural level, the focus is on sense translation, illustrative example allocation and translation, and grammatical and pragmatical labeling, in comparison with A Chinese–EnglishDictionary (3rd edn, 2010), a well-established Chinese–English counterpart. This examination reveals that the GDCFC is lexicographically well-designed and that it has to a large extent achieved the goal of combining a reference dictionary and a learner’s dictionary into one.