Abstract
Kirkeby's English–Swahili Dictionary is a bilingual dictionary of more than 50 000 entries. The most laudable feature of the dictionary is its attempt to be user-friendly especially in the way the entry words have been arranged and the amount of information given. However, a clear objective for the compilation of the ditionary is lacking. The compilers do not seem to know the lexicographical gap they want to fill, the users they are targeting, and their dictionary-using skills. In discussing the strong and weak points of the dictionary, the article will refer to theories of dictionary criticism. Three criteria set by McMillan (1949) will guide this review article: (1) the quantity of the information in the dictionary; (2) the quality of the information presented; and (3) the effectiveness of the presentation of the information. Questions posed in the course of this article will include: Does the dictionary give the information required by the user? Is the information transparently accessible? How is the information presented? Keywords: dictionary evaluation, user-friendly, dictionary-using skills, lexicographical entries, grammatical categories, subgrammatical categories, word combinations, collocations, translation equivalents
Highlights
Throughout its long history, the dictionary has always been an object of criticism and it is this practice that helped it to grow from its beginning as a glos
Some of the early recorded dictionary critics as quoted in Landau (1984: 48-56) include Addison who suggested an English dictionary with quotations from literature
Richardson and Trench, as quoted in Mathews (1933: 63-65) criticized Johnson and others for not adhering to the principles of historical lexicography. It is on the basis of these comments that James Murray with others compiled the Oxford English Dictionary according to the principles of historical lexicography
Summary
Throughout its long history, the dictionary has always been an object of criticism and it is this practice that helped it to grow from its beginning as a glos-. If a dictionary were to be judged by the number of its printed pages alone, the number of entries it purportedly contains according to the blurb, the information categories it has and the size of the paper used in printing it, Kirkeby's dictionary would undoubtedly have been the largest English–Swahili dictionary. It has 1 069 pages in comparison with the 924 pages of TUKI (1996). Apart from being guided by the three aspects of evaluation outlined in par. 1, the following discussion will especially consider the needs of the two main user groups for whom this dictionary is possibly meant: English learners of Swahili and Swahili learners of English
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