F1117 Unequal Words - Topics in Translation and Lexicography

Very, very few words in a language have absolutely exact translations in any other language. Although there may be a core shared meaning almost every word in every language has its own special idiomatic usage, metaphorical meaning, or nuances specific to its own language. Matters of grammar (gender, singular/plural, tense...), culture (customs, diet, climate...), pronunciation and rhythm, literary conventions, etc. all exert an influence.
Dictionaries, the basic tools of translation, need to offer different kinds of information in different amounts depending on the language or languages they deal with. This course will look at what kinds of information are required from different kinds of dictionaries.
To begin with, dictionaries that are aimed at native speakers of a language need to give different information, and adopt different techniques, from dictionaries that are aimed at foreigners. Editors of each type of dictionary are faced with different tasks often of very different complexity. For example, creating a definition for a simple word like \"chair\" is easy in a bilingual dictionary: all that is necessary is to give the direct translation in the other language: sedia in Italian, Stuhl in German, isu in Japanese, etc. But in a monolingual dictionary it is far more challenging: \"an item of furniture usually with four legs, used for sitting on\" may be acceptable, but it doesn\'t explain the difference between a chair and a stool, or a sofa, or a seat! Moreover, the words \"item\" and \"furniture\" are probably greater in terms of difficulty than the word \"chair\" itself, so that any foreigner who doesn\'t understand \"chair\" is even less likely to understand those two words. Nevertheless, monolingual dictionaries for foreign learners have become very popular: how do they approach the problem of explaining simple words without using difficult vocabulary in their explanations?
Meanings are not all that needs to be given in a good dictionary. Although an English dictionary or a Japanese dictionary do not need to give the gender of nouns (because nouns in those languages have no grammatical gender), information about gender is essential in an Italian or German dictionary. Generally in Italian the gender can be recognized by the ending of the word, while in German this is not necessarily so. Therefore, gender information will vary according to the language. So will information about plural endings of nouns, past tenses of verbs, forms of adjectives, etc., etc.
Pronunciation is another demanding area, and the course will begin by looking at how a variety of dictionaries handle this very important element. What system of notation is used? Is it clear to native speakers, or to foreigners, and indeed to whom should it be clear?
Special attention in this course will be paid to English, German, Italian and Japanese dictionaries (both monolingual and bilingual), but since this will be an interactive course, participating students will be encouraged to investigate other languages, too. Discussions and practical research will cover such topics as literary translation, modern translation of old works, the losses and gains incurred in translation, translation of humour, translation of colloquial language, etc. The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis will be illustrated and debated from the standpoint of translation and lexicography, too.

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You will know more about the principles and processes of editing dictionaries, and will understand the different demands placed on different genres of dictionaries.  You will be able to analyze and predict what items are required, and examine existing dictionaries critically for how they treat such items.  You will gain an insight into the obstacles faced by translators and the roles that dictionaries play in translation.

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Teaching will include conventional lecture form, so that necessary knowledge and principles can be efficiently imparted.  There will also be class discussion groups, and presentations by both groups and individuals.  The general scheme will be for the second class each week to be fundamentally in lecture form, after which homework based on the contents of the lecture will be set.  The first class of the following week will be dedicated to presentations and discussion of the results of that homework.  Each student will select at least one dictionary, or genre of dictionaries, or other task in translation, to investigate in detail.

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Please prepare one or two pages summarizing what information you think at least two of the following kinds of dictionaries should provide to their users:
1. An English-English dictionary for native speakers of English
2. An English-English dictionary for non-native learners of English
3. An Italian-English dictionary for Italian speakers
4. An Italian-English dictionary for English or other non-Italian speakers
5. A dictionary that deals with any two of the following languages: German, Hebrew, Japanese, Spanish
Bring what you have prepared to the first class, so that you can give a brief oral summary of it.