Multilingual Dictionary Research Articles

The Construction of a Term Database to Support the Compilation of Chinese-Slovene Slovene-Chinese Dictionary of Beekeeping Terms

This paper introduces the first step of making a multilingual specialized dictionary, which includes a selection of terms, their arrangement according to adequacy and the determination of synonymous relationships between the terms. The research was based of the first phase of compiling a Slovene-Chinese and Chinese-Slovene specialized beekeeping dictionary. The results of the research could, however, be applied to the making of specialized dictionaries for any research field. The focus areas of the paper are: the partial overlapping of everyday language and specialized terminology; the different arrangement approaches of existing dictionaries; the many synonyms that are often wrongly understood to denote different things; the coining of new terms when needed; the traps of literal translation.

Biblical Languages and National-Religious Boundaries in Muscovy

Inspired in part by conversations with David Goldfrank, this essay considers aspects of how attitudes toward biblical language contributed to representations of national and religious identity in late medieval and early modern Muscovite Russia. At roughly the same time in history that revived Hebrew and Greek study in Western Europe helped to stimulate the Renaissance and Reformation, bookmen in East Slavia also reconsidered the original languages of sacred writings. Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, such interest was neither unknown nor marginal within Muscovite religious culture. Hebrew-Russian glossaries circulated in leading monasteries from at least the thirteenth century; major infusions of Greek (and other) words and definitions in the sixteenth century transformed these texts into multilingual dictionaries. This mainstream tradition in Russian Orthodoxy can be linked to such important religious figures as Nil Sorskii and Maksim Grek. I argue that by “appropriating” biblical languages and terminology, often via inaccurate translations, Muscovite Russian literati created and defended their distinctive identity vis-à-vis Jews and Greeks, who were considered God’s former chosen peoples. These findings suggest reconsideration of the nature and boundaries of faith in Muscovy in the “age of confessionalism.”

Design and Analysis of a POS Tag Multilingual Dictionary for Mongolian

In this paper, we report a multilingual parallel electronic dictionary, named MPEDM. The MPEDM dictionary covers the languages in Chinese and Mongolian, including TM (traditional Mongolian), TODO (Mongolian TODO) used in China, and NM (New Mongolian Cyrillic character) used in Mongolia. The average coverage evaluation of MPEDM among different systems of Mongolian was conducted by applying the Cosine similarity measure.To build MPEDM, 80 thousands of NM words were selected by linguists. Then, a part-of-speech (POS) and Chinese word pairs were added to MPEDM by manually referring to a standard version from Inner Mongolian University and supported by NSFC of China. After that, the traditional and TODO Mongolian words were paralleled automatically based on parsing process of the Mongolian multilingual parallel corpus. It is believed that the MPEDM dictionary can be applied in many tasks, such as multilingual word searching and interpreting a word in its reading and grammatical form on line.The experimental results demonstrate that the average coverage of different texts achieves 85.2%. In addition, the relativity evaluations of MPEDM between different systems show that the similarity of TM and TODO and TODO and NM pairs are 0.72 and 0.86, respectively. Finally the best F-score of 0.67 is attained when converting Mongolian NM texts to TODO ones.

Designing a multilingual dictionary of genetic terms (English, French, German and Spanish) for the European Portal Eurogene and the International Scientific Community

In the framework of the DICGENETIC ProjectApplying Information Technologies to Designing an English-French-German-SpanishDictionary of Genetic Terms, financed by the Regional Government of Castilla yLeon, the distinguished research group team Intersemiotics, Translation and NewTechnologies was assigned to design an online multimedia terminology dictionaryto be integrated in the learning platform Moodle. The objective of thisdictionary is to provide service to users of the European genetics portalEurogene and also to the international scientific community, with a subsequentelectronic version and via the internet

Cross-Language Opinion Lexicon Extraction Using Mutual-Reinforcement Label Propagation

There is a growing interest in automatically building opinion lexicon from sources such as product reviews. Most of these methods depend on abundant external resources such as WordNet, which limits the applicability of these methods. Unsupervised or semi-supervised learning provides an optional solution to multilingual opinion lexicon extraction. However, the datasets are imbalanced in different languages. For some languages, the high-quality corpora are scarce or hard to obtain, which limits the research progress. To solve the above problems, we explore a mutual-reinforcement label propagation framework. First, for each language, a label propagation algorithm is applied to a word relation graph, and then a bilingual dictionary is used as a bridge to transfer information between two languages. A key advantage of this model is its ability to make two languages learn from each other and boost each other. The experimental results show that the proposed approach outperforms baseline significantly.

Bilingual and multilingal Russian-English phraseological dictionaries

AbstractThe paper looks into macrostructural and microstructural parameters of bilingual and multilingual Russian-English phraseological dictionaries. The dictionaries are considered in chronological order, beginning from the very first to the latest ones. Macrostructural parameters description includes the number of head phrases presented, their choice, order of their presentation. Analysis of microstructural parameters of dictionaries pays special attention to introducing head phrases from the formal viewpoint, revealing their grammatical valiency and lexical collocability, stylistic labels, giving examples illustrating the ways of their use and presentation of synonyms and antonyms. The paper also analyzes the volume and quality of the information unit of dictionary entries. The conclusions are that their volume is constantly extended and the quality of each parameter description is enhanced. Authors of dictionaries published later try to add still more parameters of phraseological unit meaning to be described in bilingual dictionaries.

Transliteration by Orthography or Phonology for Hindi and Marathi to English: Case Study

e-Governance and Web based online commercial multilingual applications has given utmost importance to the task of translation and transliteration. The Named Entities and Technical Terms occur in the source language of translation are called out of vocabulary words as they are not available in the multilingual corpus or dictionary used to support translation process. These Named Entities and Technical Terms need to be transliterated from source language to target language without losing their phonetic properties. The fundamental problem in India is that there is no set of rules available to write the spellings in English for Indian languages according to the linguistics. People are writing different spellings for the same name at different places. This fact certainly affects the Top-1 accuracy of the transliteration and in turn the translation process. Major issue noticed by us is the transliteration of named entities consisting three syllables or three phonetic units in Hindi and Marathi languages where people use mixed approach to write the spelling either by orthographical approach or by phonological approach. In this paper authors have provided their opinion through experimentation about appropriateness of either approach.

Lexicon+TX: rapid construction of a multilingual lexicon with under-resourced languages

Most efforts at automatically creating multilingual lexicons require input lexical resources with rich content (e.g. semantic networks, domain codes, semantic categories) or large corpora. Such material is often unavailable and difficult to construct for under-resourced languages. In some cases, particularly for some ethnic languages, even unannotated corpora are still in the process of collection. We show how multilingual lexicons with under-resourced languages can be constructed using simple bilingual translation lists, which are more readily available. The prototype multilingual lexicon developed comprise six member languages: English, Malay, Chinese, French, Thai and Iban, the last of which is an under-resourced language in Borneo. Quick evaluations showed that 91.2 % of 500 random multilingual entries in the generated lexicon require minimal or no human correction.

Blended Learning in Personalized Assistive Learning Environments

In this paper, the special needs/requirements of disabled students and cost-benefits for applying blended learning in Personalized Educational Learning Environments (PELE) in Higher Education are studied. The authors describe how blended learning can form an attractive and helpful framework for assisting Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (D-HH) students to learn and communicate. The described blended learning experiment integrates face-to-face, synchronous, and asynchronous e-learning, bilingual teaching (oral language and Sign Language) in the mainstream class, teaching in parallel classes, and personalized access to distributed databases of educational material. At the core of PELE, the authors use Multimedu, a web-based tailored made tool for disabled students. This experimental tool includes applications of a traditional Learning Management System (LMS), supporting a multilingual dictionary of terms, multimedia management and social networking. Finally, this paper describes the use of the blended e-learning model in “Database I” course, given at the Technological Educational Institute of Athens, Greece.

The Multilingual Lexicon: The Cognitive and Neural Basis of Lexical Comprehension and Production in Two or More Languages

Recent studies have shown that when bilinguals or multilinguals read written words, listen to spoken words, or plan words that they intend to speak in one language alone, information in all of the languages that they know is momentarily active. That activation produces cross-language competition that sometimes converges to facilitate performance and sometimes diverges to create costs to performance. The presence of parallel activation across languages has been documented in comprehension, in studies of word recognition, and also in production, in studies of lexical speech planning. The observation that one of the two or more languages cannot be switched off at will is particularly surprising in production, where the intention to express a thought should be guided by conceptually driven processes. Likewise, in comprehension, recent studies show that placing words in sentence context in one language alone is insufficient to restrict processing to that language. The focus of current research on the multilingual lexicon is therefore to understand the basis of language nonselectivity, to consider how the language in use is ultimately selected, and to identify the cognitive consequences of having a lexical system that is open to influence by the languages not in use. In this article, we review the recent cognitive and neural evidence on each of these issues, with special consideration to the question of how the nature of the evidence itself shapes the conclusions drawn about the organization and access to the lexicon in individuals who speak more than one language.

Personalized Adaptive Networked Learning for Disabled Students & Social Networking for the Inclusion of students – The Multimedu tool

The Multimedia Education tool (Multimedu tool) is a web-based integrated system that “accumulates” information, in any form: video, audio, text, picture, documents. It is based on the contribution of academic collaborative networked communities, and makes the multimedia material accessible and available to everyone through a Terms Dictionary and a Multimedia Library. It also supports social networking. The Multimedu system facilitates personalized communication and supports learning and inclusion of disabled students in Higher Education. Services based on the Multimedu system can be offered to the disabled and other students in the mainstream class, in the parallel “assistive” classes, and in the labs. Distance learning is supported in synchronous mode. Asynchronous and online services are offered by the integrated multilingual multimedia dictionary of terms.

Bilingual Dictionaries and Communicative Equivalence for a Multilingual Society

In a multilingual society dictionaries play an important role in assisting to achieve communicative success between the speakers of the different languages. Speakers in a multilingual society often employ a bilingual dictionary as the only instrument to meet their lexicographic needs. This implies that a bilingual dictionary becomes a polyfunctional instrument, presenting more information than just translation equivalents. This article focuses on the contents and the presentation of bilingual dictionaries. To achieve the optimal transfer of information for South African bilingual dictionaries, some general problems are identified and discussed. With the emphasis on the user perspective, metalexicographical criteria are used to investigate problems regarding the access structure and the addressing procedures in Afrikaans dictionaries. Suggestions are made to expand the outer access structure and to employ innovative methods, including the use of inserted inner texts, to improve the inner access structure. Changes in the addressing procedures to make provision for the more frequent use of nonlemmatic addressing procedures are also suggested.

Afrikaans Learner's Dictionaries for a Multilingual South Africa

Dictionaries have to be compiled in accordance with the specific needs and demands of a well-defined target user. Within the multilingual and multicultural South African society dictionaries should be aimed at the needs of the different groups of language learners. This article discusses aspects of Afrikaans learner's dictionaries. The emphasis is on the need and criteria for such dictionaries, the typical target user and on the nature of the macro- and microstructural information to be included. In a learner's dictionary the information should be presented in such a way that it can be retrieved without problems. Attention is given to various access structures employed to enhance the retrievability of information. It is argued that a restricted and simplified microstructure leads to a decrease in the density of information but to an increase in the explicitness and retrievability. The article proposes a different approach to the inclusion of certain types of encyclopedic information in learner's dictionaries. Keywords: access structures, addressing, density of information, encyclopedic information, explicitness, illustrative examples, learner's dictionary, macrostructure, metalexicography, microstructure, pictorial illustrations, retrievability, simplicity, target user, translation equivalents

Japanese Learning Support Systems: Hinoki Project Report

In this report, we introduce the Hinoki project, which set out to develop web-based Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL) systems for Japanese language learners more than a decade ago. Utilizing Natural Language Processing technologies and other linguistic resources, the project has come to encompass three systems, two corpora and many other resources. Beginning with the reading assistance system Asunaro, we describe the construction of Asunaro's multilingual dictionary and it's dependency grammar-based approach to reading assistance. The second system, Natsume, is a writing assistance system that uses large-scale corpora to provide an easy to use collocation search feature that is interesting for it's inclusion of the concept of genre. The final system, Nutmeg, is an extension of Natsume and the Natane learner corpus. It provides automatic correction of learners errors in compositions by using Natsume for its large corpus and genre-aware collocation data and Natane for its data on learner errors.

Reading Tutor, A Reading Support System for Japanese Language Learners

The present paper gives an overview of the tools and materials included in the Japanese language reading tutorial system Reading Tutor and the multilingual lexicographical project Reading Tutor Web Dictionary, and discusses their possible uses both for Japanese language instruction and to support autonomous language learning. The paper further presents one particular use of these tools and resources for the development of learning materials for foreign candidates to the Japanese certified care worker national examination, and concludes with suggestions for effective guidance geared at fostering autonomous vocabulary learning.

Issues in the Planning of a Multilingual Explanatory Dictionary of Chemistry for South African Students

Developing human potential and actively promoting science and technology are among the priorities of the present South African government. Significant progress in these areas can only be made if relevant education and training are provided timeously. Surveys conducted by overseas as well as local researchers indicate that mother-tongue education is one of the measures to improve learning. While mother-tongue education at secondary and tertiary level is at present not provided to speakers of African languages, compromise solutions have to be offered, such as multilingual explanatory special-field dictionaries. By providing linguistic and encyclopedic information in English, Afrikaans and two or more of the African languages the concepts of the subject-field are made accessible via the language(s) of wider communication as well as via the mother tongue of the student. Although there are many difficulties and potential pitfalls awaiting terminographers and special-field experts who attempt a project of this nature, substantial preliminary work that has already been done with regard to a quadrilingual explanatory dictionary of chemistry indicated that this ideal is not out of reach. The compilers believe that successful completion of the project, as well as favourable results, will verify the hypotheses that served as points of departure for the project.

A Multilingual, Multicultural and Explanatory Music Education Dictionary for South Africa --- Using Wiegand's Metalexicography to Establish its Purposes, Functions and Nature

Wiegand's metalexicography is used to establish the purposes, functions and nature of a multilingual, multicultural, and explanatory music education dictionary for South Africa. Specific types of dictionaries have specific purposes. Special-field dictionaries should fulfil the purpose of conveying information on knowledge in special fields. They should also solve communication conflicts. The genuine purposes of special-field dictionaries, according to Wiegand, are to convey either linguistic information on terms, or encyclopedic information, or both. The needs of users should be taken into account when determining the functions of a dictionary. When the functions of a dictionary containing music terms from South Africa is considered, social factors in South African music education also have to be taken into account. The planned dictionary will have a linguistic and a communicative function. It will also have a cognitive and scientific function, fulfilling an educational need. With regard to the nature of the planned dictionary, it will have to contain elements of different types of dictionaries, such as explanatory dictionaries, translation dictionaries, and learner's dictionaries. A thematic arrangement will be followed, supplemented by an alphabetical index. Two versions of the dictionary will have to be published, namely, a more scholarly version for specialists, with more types of information, as well as a more popular version for nonspecialists. <b>Keywords:</b> multicultural dictionary; multilingual dictionary; explanatory dictionary; special-field dictionary; wiegand; purposes of dictionaries; functions of dictionaries; encyclopedic information; linguistic information; dictionary use; protocols; learner's lexicography

Die begriffliche Identität in den Wirtschaftswörterbüchern

Summary Conceptual equivalence in economic dictionaries. This study aims at giving an overview of the bi- and multilingual economic dictionaries published in Hungary in printed and electronic forms; striving to fulfil this aim, it also endeavours to demonstrate, through specific examples, the presence or absence of conceptual equivalence and the difficulties created by them. The research of equivalence constitutes an important and controversial field both in linguistic sciences and in the linguistic theory of translation. There are several schools of thought concerning equivalence; different approaches have evolved according to the different fields and levels (e.g. semantic, text-level, semiotic, pragmatic approaches). Since the subject of our research is constituted by the above-mentioned language tools and technical terminology, we have decided to base our research on conceptual equivalence, i.e. the analysis of ‘conceptual equivalence’ of Arntz and Picht (1991). The latter is comparable with the concept-based research of technical terms.

Zur ältesten Geschichte der deutsch-polnischen Lexikographie. Wörterbücher aus dem 16. und 17. Jahrhundert

Abstract The subject of the article are the oldest works on the subject of lexicography. Its origins go back to the 1630s and originate from a tradition of multilingual dictionaries in which Latin was the leading (or initial language). In the mid-17th century the first German-Polish-Latin dictionary was published and towards the end of the 17th century the first German-Polish dictionary in which Latin was not included.

Activating learning using multilingual CALL lexical resources: A regional culture-oriented multilingual visual dictionary project

This presentation reports on-going work on a Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEXT) funded Multilingual Visual Dictionary (MLVD) CALL Project. The project involves the compilation of a visual dictionary with entries presented in three languages: Japanese, English, and Chinese (mainland and Taiwanese). All the materials are recorded in the three languages. Visuals include still photographs, maps, and short videos. The dictionary is organized by themes, and the content focuses on Japanese and Okinawan cultural items. This report briefly explains the rational for the project, its technical development, the design of the dictionary, the presentation and organization of entries, and examples of practice activities.