The description of culture-specific lexical items in bilingual dictionaries

The paper discusses the macrostructural treatment of multi-word lexical items in mono- and bilingual dictionaries. First, the classification of multi-word lexical items is presented, and special attention is paid to the discussion of compounds – a specific group of multi-word lexical items that is most commonly afforded headword status but whose inclusion in the headword list may also depend on spelling. Then the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in monolingual dictionaries is dealt with in greater detail, while the results of a short survey on the inclusion of five randomly chosen multi-word lexical items in seven English monolingual dictionaries are presented. The proposals as to how to treat these five multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries are presented in the section about the inclusion of multi-word lexical items in bilingual dictionaries. The conclusion is that it is most important to take the users’ needs into consideration and to make any dictionary as user friendly as possible.

ABSTRACTAlmost 200 years ago Scottish protestant missionary Robert Morrison published the first volume of A Chinese–English Dictionary, the first bilingual dictionary of Chinese and English ever published. While some bilingual vocabularies and dictionaries of the Chinese language in other European languages had been produced earlier, Morrison's achievement in compiling and publishing a complete bilingual dictionary of the Chinese language in English while residing in China was a significant milestone. This paper explores the way Morrison positioned himself as a bilingual lexicographer between two very different languages and their associated cultures; cultures that had very little interaction prior to his task of dictionary compilation. He undertook the task in a context in which the study of Chinese language, ownership of books in Chinese, and printing materials in Chinese were all prohibited. His dictionary entries, illustrative examples, and cultural explanations went beyond typical bilingual lexicography. His efforts were more so an experience in intercultural mediation; the provision of detailed cultural and contextual explanations of the Chinese language, made accessible to a Western readership wishing to learn Chinese and understand its culture. The impact of his efforts on future Chinese bilingual lexicographic work in China, and reflections on his achievements, are discussed.

This article conducts a comparative analysis of ethnocultural units in bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, focusing on English and Uzbek languages. Ethnocultural units-terms, phrases, and expressions that encapsulate cultural significance-play a crucial role in language learning and cultural understanding. By examining selected entries from both bilingual (English-Uzbek) and monolingual (English and Uzbek) dictionaries, this article aims to identify differences in representation, contextual usage, and cultural nuances. The findings reveal that while bilingual dictionaries often provide direct translations, they may lack depth in cultural context, potentially hindering learners' comprehension. In contrast, monolingual dictionaries tend to offer richer explanations but may be less accessible for non-native speakers

Misunderstandings between speakers of different languages occur not only on a linguistic level but also on a cultural one. Consultation of a bilingual dictionary does not necessarily help in this case, as information on the cultural level is often missing. In this paper we will discuss how bilingual dictionaries can draw attention to cultural divergences so that the dictionary user acquires cultural knowledge and is able to build an intercultural competence. Examples from four bilingual dictionaries (German-Italian) are given to illustrate how culture-bound words are represented. For this purpose, a classification of culture-bound words is offered. Finally, the prerequisites and possibilities of an appropriate representation of culture-bound items in bilingual dictionaries will be proposed.

Given the lack of definition and contextualization of grammatical items in bilingual dictionaries, we decided to carry out a research that tried to fill these gaps in the microstructure of Portuguese-French (BP-FR) and Portuguese-English (BP-ENG) bilingual dictionaries. The study aimed at providing a support tool for students, language researchers, teachers or translators who work with both pair of languages. Thus, from observation and analysis of parallel corpora, we studied the conjunctions mas, porm, contudo, entretanto and todavia of Brazilian Portuguese and their translations into French and English in order to elaborate differential bilingual entries, defined and contextualized according to the proposal by Zavaglia (2004aZavaglia ( , 2004bZavaglia ( , 2004cZavaglia ( , 2006 The study was based on a parallel corpus composed of five Brazilian literary books and their translations into French and English. Another important material for the research was the computer program WordSmith Tools, provided by the Area of Linguistic, Literary and Translation Studies in French (FFLCH / USP). Based on the foundations of Corpus Linguistics, Antoine Culioli's Enunciative Linguistics, Lexicography and Translation Studies, this work consisted then in the elaboration of 10 differential bilingual entries -5 are Portuguese-French and 5 are Portuguese-Englishfor each studied unit. The entries related to the French language will become part of the bilingual Dicionrio Relacional (Portuguese-French) -DIRE (ZAVAGLIA, 2008), which guided every step of this work.

The amount of non-English information on the Web has proliferated so rapidly in recent years that it often is difficult for a user to retrieve documents in an unfamiliar language. In this study, we report the design and evaluation of a multilingual Web portal in the business domain in English, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and German. Web pages relevant to the domain were collected. Search queries were translated using bilingual dictionaries, while phrasal translation and co-occurrence analysis were used for query translation disambiguation. Pivot translations were also used for language-pairs where bilingual dictionaries were not available. A user evaluation study showed that on average, multilingual performance achieved 72.99% of monolingual performance. In evaluating pivot translation, we found that it achieved 40% performance of monolingual retrieval, which was not as good as direct translation. Overall, our results are encouraging and show promise of successful application of MLIR techniques to Web retrieval.

This paper reports experimental results for cross-language infor-mation retrieval (CLIR) from German to French, in which a hybrid approach to query and document translation was attempted, i.e., combining the results of query translation (German to French) and of document translation (French to German). In order to reduce the complexity of computation when translating a large amount of texts, we performed pseudo-translation, i.e., a simple replacement of terms by a bilingual dictionary (for query translation, a machine translation system was used). In particular, since English was used as an intermediary language for both translation directions between German and French, English translations at the middle stage were employed as document representations in order to reduce the number of translation steps. By omitting a translation step (English to German), the performance was improved. Unfortunately, our hybrid approach did not show better performance than a simple query translation. This may be due to the low performance of document translation, which was carried out by a simple replacement of terms using a bilingual dictionary with no term disambiguation.

Culture-bound items are often omitted in lexicographic resources, and when they are present, they are rarely described in an appropriate way, especially in bilingual dictionaries: the listed equivalents often do not reflect the meaning of the cultural word precisely, usage examples may be missing and above all — especially for a non-native speaker — important information on the cultural level is omitted (Nied Curcio 2020). Communication problems and misunderstandings which are triggered not by divergences on the linguistic level, but on the cultural level, can arise between speakers of different languages and cultures. Specific cultural knowledge and an advanced level of intercultural competence are required. Mediation of texts and concepts and using mediation strategies can provide significant input developing the lexicographer's intercultural competence, which is essential for an adequate lexico­graphic description of cultural aspects. Mediators often resort to their plurilinguistic and pluricul­tural repertoire and use mediation strategies. The same skills can also be harnessed by lexicogra­phers for adequate and successful descriptions of culture-bound items in lexicographic resources. In this article the focus is on the concept of mediation; the Companion Volume of the Common Euro­pean Frame­work of Reference for Languages (2018) shows parallels in the requirements of skills between mediators and lexicographers, and advocates the use of mediation strategies by lexicogra­phers to ensure that cultural information is adequately represented in the dictionary. Keywords: bilingual dictionaries, cultural items, translation, inter­cultural competence, mediation, mediation strategies, plurilingual com­petence, pluricultural competence

Kinship terminologies, which vary across cultures and languages, present challenges for lexicographers in creating bilingual dictionaries. Effective bilingual dictionaries must accurately and comprehensively reflect kinship terms and their equivalents. This study explores the lexicographic treatment of Xitsonga kinship terms in bilingual dictionaries, focusing on their definition, translation, and cross-referencing in English-Xitsonga contexts. It addresses the lexicographic challenges posed by kinship terms' cultural specificity and structural diversity across languages. Using a descriptive qualitative methodology, data were collected from the English-Tsonga/Tsonga-English Pocket Dictionary (2008) and the Pharos Bilingual Dictionary: English-Xitsonga/Xitsonga-English (2021). This study is guided by the user-driven approach to lexicography. The study has found that even though bilingual dictionaries offer some accurate equivalents, they often lack full definitions and overlook specific cultural nuances. Cultural differences between English and Xitsonga were identified as key factors limiting the inclusion of kinship equivalents. To improve the accuracy and cultural representation of kinship terms, this study recommends expanding definitions to cover a wider range of familial relationships and ensuring all relevant Xitsonga equivalents are included to reflect its cultural distinctions. These findings contribute to understanding the challenges and opportunities of presenting kinship terms and informing the improvement of bilingual lexicographic resources for Xitsonga.

Within the research field of bilingual lexical representation and organization, much attention has been given to whether two languages share a conceptual system and what factors modulate the connection between this conceptual system and the lexical systems of a bilingual’s L1 and L2. One of the most valid ways in the psycholinguistics domain to explore these doubts is to examine the masked translation priming effect and the priming asymmetry through cross-language priming experiments. In this study, a masked priming lexical decision task was conducted with unbalanced English-Chinese bilinguals to investigate whether the masked translation priming effect exists in both translation directions, and to further reveal how the number of translations, which can be categorized into one-translation pair and more-than-one-translation pair conditions, affects the priming effects and modulates translation priming asymmetry. It was demonstrated that both translation direction and the number of translations influence the priming effect. Specifically, the priming effect was observable from L1 to L2 but not from L2 to L1, and the priming for one-translation pairs was significantly greater when compared to that for more-than-one-translation pairs. Moreover, the impacts of translation direction on the priming effect differed between the one-translation pair and more-than-one-translation pair conditions: under the former condition, substantial priming occurred in both directions, whereas for the latter condition, it was observed only in the L1–L2 direction. Several models of the bilingual mental lexicon, mainly the Revised Hierarchical Model and the Distributed Conceptual Feature Model, were used to elucidate the above results.

The article considers the problem of the Yakut language attrition among children and young people for whom this is the language of origin. By means of sociolinguistic research, the article determines the attitude of the younger generation to their native language as a cultural phenomenon. A significant component of the research toolkit is our criteria for the cultural competence level. The article also presents the results of the sociolinguistic analysis of the factors reducing the linguistic and cultural competence of schoolchildren. The study allowed us to come to the conclusion about the need to publish special dictionaries containing a cultural component and explanations of the words that are difficult for modern youth to understand. In this regard, we describe the experience of developing an illustrated dictionary of Yakut mythological symbols and obsolete words based on the works included into the school curriculum. This bilingual dictionary is intended for pupils, teachers and students. Working with it will help develop students’ linguistic culture, skills in independent information search and interpretation of the deep meanings of fictional and folklore texts. In the Republic, this kind of dictionary has been developed for the first time. The publication of the “Illustrated Dictionary of Mythological Symbols and Difficult-to-Perceive Yakut Words: Based on Works of the School Curriculum” is timely and relevant. Serious work has been done to identify the typological characteristics of mythological symbols found in the works of the school curriculum.

The purpose of this study is to develop Korean semantic network dictionary for foreign students. The result of this study will focus on individual study where learners are able to find the meaning of the vocabulary to understand and practice without the help of the teachers. In many cases, when introduced to new vocabulary learners rely on bilingual dictionaries. Current bilingual dictionaries present diverse meanings and examples; however the fact is the meta-languages and examples given requires higher level than what the learner’s can comprehend. In order to supplement the bilingual dictionaries shortcoming, the study suggests development of Korean dictionary incorporating semantic network, corpus, and advantages of the bilingual dictionary. Based on WordNet and Kornet, the study utilizes the vocabulary meaning from bilingual dictionary and foreign learner corpus data to develop semantic network dictionary to help leaner’s individual study. This study aims to explore educational gradation of Korean vocabulary meaning particularly for L2 learners. The study focuses on the polysemous verbs with the features related to the semantic expansion based on the L2 learners’ intellectual abilities, thereby presents a need to set the standards for educational gradation of Korean vocabulary meaning. The result has a great significance for the Korean vocabulary education on the basis of L2 learners’ abilities. The meanings of each polysemy are presented based on the frequency of meaning dictionary and the corpus data is also employed for the purpose of the analysis on the semantic expansion.

This paper presents a Machine Translation system for Devnagarito English language translation. Proposed system is able to translate more than one Devnagari sentences to English using rule base approach. The system accepts Marathi language which is derived from Devnagari and translates it to English language. This is done by identifying the parts of speech in Marathi sentence,tokenization and identifying English meaning of each word in bilingual dictionary and get a direct translation. Thesedirect translated words are linked by the English grammar rules to have meaningful translation in English.

Cross language information retrieval (CLIR) deals with the use of queries in one language to access documents in another. A popular CLIR approach is to translate the query into the language of the documents being retrieved. The simplest yet most effective method for query translation is bilingual dictionary approach. However, direct translation using bilingual dictionary prune two problems: proper names and compound words translations. In this study, a series of experiments were conducted to test and evaluate the effectiveness of the Malay-English CLIR using proper names and compound words translation. We believe by using concept-based indexing and translations, makes proper names and compound words translation possible. The best retrieval performance was obtained from the combination of query translation approach-select all translations listed in the dictionary, the alternative weighting scheme and proper names identification and translation.

In this paper, an analysis of the selection of lexical items in Japanese mimetic dictionaries is presented to discuss the theoretical definition of Japanese mimetic words in lexicographic practice from the point of view of Japanese mimetic linguistics. By examining the selection of lexical items listed in six Japanese mimetic dictionaries, this study attempts to determine the way in which dictionary-makers identify and represent the Japanese mimetic words as a lexical category. Adopting a mainly descriptive approach, this paper analyzes the lexical selection of four monolingual and two bilingual mimetic dictionaries. Firstly, formal and etymological criteria for selecting dictionary entries are discussed. Secondly, the coverage of each selection is compared. Next, special attention is given to whether selected mimetics are presented as primary or secondary items (namely lemmatical or non-lemmatical items) from a lexicographic perspective and, finally, the proportions of each type of item are contrasted. As a conclusion, Japanese mimetic dictionaries show similar patterns in terms of lexical selection. In general, lexicographic practice defines the Japanese mimetic category as lexical units, mostly adverbs, formed by allegedly sound-symbolic elements with a discrete morphophonological structure. In contrast to the published literature, the largest differences were observed in the treatment of pseudo-mimetic words, as well as in the distinction between mimetic expressions containing single or multiple words.