Abstract
The article sheds light on the necessity of finding new techniques to rank the users' preferences for English–Arabic dictionaries. The first section of the article reports the findings of an experimental technique devised for this particular purpose. The reviews for dictionaries on Amazon. com turn out to be a more valuable source of lexicographical information than had been expected. It will also be shown how the reviews can determine the future buyers' choice as to which English–Arabic or Arabic–English dictionary would meet their needs. Based on the Amazon reviews, the article devotes a section to investigate the microstructural features of some lexical entries in the Oxford English–Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage (OEAD). To learn more about the dictionary's microstructure, the next section analyzes a pre-selected list of 113 lexical units in an attempt to test the dictionary for the amount of information it provides for some high-frequency items. The article deals with the OEAD mostly from the point of view of encoding English-speaking users. The Modern Language Association (MLA) recently reported that from 1998 to 2002 there was a 92% increase in the number of Arabic programs throughout the United States, hence the pressing need for dictionaries designed with English-speaking users as the target group. The article suggests that an extensive linguistic revision of the OEAD will make it more systematic and userfriendly. Keywords: Bilingual Dictionary, Decoding Users, Encoding Users, English–Arabic, English-Speaking Users, Learners Of Arabic, Lexicography, Microstructure, Reviews, Users' Preferences
Highlights
The 1972 edition of the Oxford English–Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage ( OEAD) is the dictionary recommended by teachers of Arabic at the University of Georgia, though they themselves admitted that using the dictionary was not a common practice in their classes
Because this edition has never been revised, we examined a few pages from its 1982 abridged version: The Concise Oxford English–Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage ( COEAD)
The technique is interesting in the sense that it provided us with a set of criteria along which we evaluated the OEAD from a dictionary user's perspective
Summary
The 1972 edition of the Oxford English–Arabic Dictionary of Current Usage ( OEAD) is the dictionary recommended by teachers of Arabic at the University of Georgia, though they themselves admitted that using the dictionary was not a common practice in their classes. About the COEAD (1982), a concise edition of the English–Arabic dictionary, one Amazon reviewer, among others, explains: "sometimes there are multiple Arabic words for one English entry. Many users suggest that Al-Mawrid and Hans Wehr (the editions are not always indicated) and even the Arabic Practical Dictionary by Hippocrene (2004), which is a pocket dictionary, constitute good companions as they include information which is missing in the OEAD. Let us consider the number of Amazon reviews for different editions of English–Arabic/Arabic English dictionaries:. The Hippocrene Practical Dictionary (2004), with only 18 000 entries, ranks second This is an indication of how much users prefer dictionaries which do not offer many Arabic equivalents for the English words, in addition to offering the IPA pronunciation of Arabic words in the A–E section. Note that the sales rankings are updated on a regular basis and these were the results obtained on July 7, 2009
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