English-Latvian Dictionaries in the Age of Electronic Lexicography
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.22364/BJELLC.10.2020.06Keywords:
electronic lexicography, English-Latvian electronic dictionary, headword, microstructure, user interface, corpus dataAbstract
In the 21st century the advantages of electronic dictionaries have been widely acknowledged. Electronic dictionaries form an important branch of contemporary lexicography, however, in general English-Latvian lexicography print dictionaries still outnumber the electronic ones since there is only one large English-Latvian dictionary with complex microstructure and two differing user interfaces that is available in the electronic medium. The aim of the study is to analyse the major general English-Latvian electronic dictionary, determine its type and assess the compliance of this dictionary with the standards of contemporary electronic lexicography. The analysis focuses on the evaluation of dictionary microstructure, the accessibility of information, the adaptability of user interface, the use of dictionary-internal and external links and the sources of lexicographical data in the general English-Latvian electronic dictionary. The analysis reveals that even though the microstructure of the electronic dictionary is essentially based on a print dictionary, it has been supplemented by information from various other sources. The dictionary applies some innovative features of contemporary electronic lexicography, but various improvements related to the presentation of some metalinguistic elements, unity of microstructure, diversity of search options, use of dictionary-internal and external links, application of corpus data and multimodality would be necessary to enhance its correspondence to the standards of contemporary electronic lexicography.
References
Asmussen, J. (2013) Combined products: Dictionary and corpus. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard and H. E. Wiegand (eds.) Dictionaries. The International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography (pp. 1081–1090). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238136.1081
Atkins, B. T. S. ([1996] 2002) Bilingual dictionaries: Past, present and future. In M.-H. Correard (ed.), Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. A Festschrift in Honour of B. T. S. Atkins (pp. 1–29). Euralex.
Atkins, B. T. S. and Rundell, M. (2008) The Oxford Guide to Practical Lexicography. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199277704.001.0001
Belzēja, Z., Birzvalka, I., Jurka, L., Mozere, R., Raškevičs, J. and Treilons, A. (1995) Angļu-latviešu vārdnīca / English-Latvian Dictionary. Rīga: Jāņa sēta.
Belzēja, Z., Birzvalka, I., Jurka, L., Mozere, R., Raškevičs, J. and Treilons, A. (2004) Angļu-latviešu vārdnīca / English-Latvian Dictionary. J. Baldunčiks (ed.), 4th ed. Rīga: Jāņa sēta.
Debus-Gregor, E. and Heid, U. (2013) Design criteria and ‘added value’ of electronic dictionaries for human use. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard and H. E. Wiegand (eds.) Dictionaries. The International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography (pp. 1001–1013). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238136.1001
Deksne, D. and Veisbergs, A. (2018) A workflow for supplementing a Latvian-English Dictionary with data from parallel corpora and a reversed English-Latvian Dictionary. In J. Čibej, V. Gorjanc, I. Kosem and S. Krek (eds.) Proceedings of the XVIII EURALEX International Congress: Lexicography in Global Contexts (pp. 127–135). Ljubljana: Ljubljana University Press.
Engelberg, S. and Müller-Spitzer, C. (2013) Dictionary portals. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard and H. E. Wiegand (eds.) Dictionaries. The International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography (pp. 1023–1035). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238136.1023
Fuertes-Olivera, P. A. (2015) e-Lexicography: The continuing challenge of applying new technology to dictionary-making. In H. Jackson (ed.) The Bloomsbury Companion to Lexicography (pp. 323–340). London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Gouws, R. H., Schweickard, W. and Wiegand, H. E. (2013) Dictionaries in modern society: Current status and perspectives. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard and H. E. Wiegand (eds.) Dictionaries. The International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography (pp. 1–24). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238136.1
Granger, S. (2012) Electronic lexicography – from challenge to opportunity. In S. Granger and M. Paquot (eds.) Electronic Lexicography (pp. 1–11). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654864.003.0001
Kalniņa, Dz., Kičigins, E., Kvēle-Kvāle, K., Linde, A., Miezīte, D., Pavlova, R., Štāle, D., Strazdiņa, A. and Strazdiņa, I. (2007) Angļu-latviešu vārdnīca / English-Latvian Dictionary, E. Roze (ed.). [Rīga]: Avots.
Kosem, I. (2016) Interrogating a corpus. In P. Durkin (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Lexicography (pp. 76–93). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199691630.013.6
Rundell, M. (2012) The road to automated lexicography: An editor’s viewpoint. In S. Granger and M. Paquot (eds.) Electronic Lexicography (pp. 15–30). Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654864.003.0002
Schmitz, U. (2013) Monolingual and bilingual electronic dictionaries on the Internet. In R. H. Gouws, U. Heid, W. Schweickard and H. E. Wiegand (eds.) Dictionaries. The International Encyclopedia of Lexicography. Supplementary Volume: Recent Developments with Focus on Electronic and Computational Lexicography (pp. 1013–1023). Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110238136.1013
Svensén, B. (2009) A Handbook of Lexicography: The Theory and Practice of Dictionary-Making. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tarp, S. (2011) Lexicographical and other e-tools for consultation purposes: Towards the individualization of needs satisfaction. In P. A. Fuertes-Olivera and H. Bergenholtz (eds.) e-Lexicography: The Internet, Digital Initiatives and Lexicography (pp. 54–70). London, New York: Continuum.
Trap-Jensen, L. (2010) Access to multiple lexical resources at a stroke: Integrating dictionary, corpus and Wordnet data. In S. Granger and M. Paquot (eds.) eLexicography in the 21st Century: New Challenges, New Applications. Proceedings of eLex 2009 (pp. 295–302). Louvain-la-Neuve: Presses universitaires de Louvain.
Varantola, K. (2002) Use and usability of dictionaries: Common sense and context sensibility? In M.-H. Correard (ed.) Lexicography and Natural Language Processing. A Festschrift in Honour of B. T. S. Atkins (pp. 30–44). Euralex.
Wills, T., Jóhannsson, E. T. and Battista, S. (2018) Linking corpus data to an excerpt-based historical dictionary. In J. Čibej, V. Gorjanc, I. Kosem and S. Krek (eds.) Proceedings of the XVIII EURALEX International Congress: Lexicography in Global Contexts (pp. 979–987). Ljubljana: Ljubljana University Press.
ELECTRONIC DICTIONARIES AND LEXICAL DATABASES
[Online 1] WordNet 3.1. Available from http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 2] LEED. Available from https://www.letonika.lv/groups/default.aspx?g=2&r=10621033 [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 3] ELED-L. Available from https://www.letonika.lv/groups/default.aspx?g=2&r=10331062 [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 4] ELED-T. Available from https://www.tilde.lv/tildes-birojs [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 5] ELED-Glosbe. Available from https://glosbe.com/en/lv [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 6] ELED-Ectaco. Available from http://www.ectaco.co.uk/English-Latvian-Dictionary/ [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 7] ELED-Lingea. Available from https://www.dict.com/latvian-english/ [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 8] EuroTermBank. Available from https://www.eurotermbank.com/ [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 9] Eurovoc Thesaurus. Available from https://publications.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/th-dataset/-/resource/dataset/eurovoc [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
[Online 10] letonika.lv. Available from https://www.letonika.lv/ [Accessed on 2 September 2019].
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 University of Latvia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
