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<DIV><FONT color=#0000ff size=4>Interesting perspective expressed
below....</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=gillesmaurice.deschryver@UGent.be
href="mailto:gillesmaurice.deschryver@UGent.be">Gilles-Maurice de Schryver</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=afrilex@freelists.org
href="mailto:afrilex@freelists.org">afrilex@freelists.org</A> ; <A
title=asialex@freelists.org
href="mailto:asialex@freelists.org">asialex@freelists.org</A> ; <A
title=DSNA@yahoogroups.com
href="mailto:DSNA@yahoogroups.com">DSNA@yahoogroups.com</A> ; <A
title=lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com
href="mailto:lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com">lexicographylist@yahoogroups.com</A>
; <A title=ishll@lists.le.ac.uk
href="mailto:ishll@lists.le.ac.uk">ishll@lists.le.ac.uk</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Tuesday, November 06, 2012 10:07 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> [Lexicog] FW: Macmillan's recent announcement</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV><SPAN style="DISPLAY: none"> </SPAN>
<DIV id=ygrp-text>
<P>
<DIV class=WordSection1>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 11pt">To round off
this thread, from Michael Rundell ...<O></O></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="COLOR: #1f497d; FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><O></O></SPAN></P>
<DIV>
<DIV style="BORDER-TOP: #b5c4df 1pt solid">
<P class=MsoNormal><B><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt"
lang=EN-US>From:</SPAN></B><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt" lang=EN-US> Michael
Rundell [mailto:michael.rundell@googlemail.com] <B>On Behalf Of </B>Michael
Rundell<BR><B>Sent:</B> dinsdag 6 november 2012 16:32<BR><B>To:</B> <A
href="mailto:euralex@freelists.org">euralex@freelists.org</A><BR><B>Cc:</B> <A
href="mailto:braasch@hum.ku.dk">braasch@hum.ku.dk</A>; Simon Krek Gmail;
Gilles-Maurice de Schryver; Bullon, Stephen<BR><B>Subject:</B> Macmillan's
recent announcement<O></O></SPAN></P></DIV></DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I thought it was time I waded
into this debate. Thanks to everyone who has contributed so many interesting and
pertinent points. Much of what I have to say on the subject has already been
said more eloquently by people like Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, Simon Krek, and
Anna Braasch, and my colleague Stephen Bullon, but i'll put my two cents in
anyway.</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">I think the arguments against
abandoning print fall into two main categories, practical and
cultural/emotional.</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The practical argument is that
not everyone in the world enjoys good (or even any) web connectivity. True
(though becoming less true all the time). As any publisher would, Macmillan took
soundings from its sales people worldwide to gauge future demand for print
dictionaries (which of course varies wildly from place to place). The current,
final print run takes account of these forecasts, and means we'll be able to
satisfy that demand for some time to come. Another model (which we have already
applied in a few cases) is that a local publishing partner can produce
locally-printed versions of our dictionaries under licence: an elegant and
efficient approach for which there may continue to be some demand over the
next few years. But the process of digitization is unstoppable - surely we
all believe that? - and we see these measures as contingencies, to respond
to a <EM><SPAN>transitional</SPAN></EM> situation. (An aside: I seem to remember
Sarah Ogilvie, in a plenary on endangered languages at Euralex 2010, mentioning
that in remote areas of Western Australia, aboriginal people took advantage of
the satellite technology installed by mining companies there, and all had mobile
phones with bilingual dictionaries on them. So even thousands of miles from big
cities, digital dictionaries are by no means 'exotic'.)</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">This doesn't mean paper
dictionaries will disappear any time soon: rather that, like vinyl LPs (as we
used to call them) they will be more of a niche. There are many
languages in the world that haven't yet benefited from the last big
lexicographic revolution - the 'corpus revolution' that began in the 1980s
- and publishers like Ilan Kernerman have provided excellent resources for
what we (reluctantly) refer to as 'smaller' languages. But Macmillan produces
dictionaries of English, and that most definitely is not a
niche.</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">The second argument, roughly,
is that we all like delving into physical books, and printed dictionaries offer
serendipitous discoveries as we idly browse them. Well, up to a point. But as
Anna put it, 'most people are not lexicographers or lovers of words, for them a
dictionary is just a tool'. The primary market for Macmillan's pedagogical
dictionaries consists either of learners of English or people whose first
language isn't English but who need to use English in their professional or
academic lives (an enormous group). This cohort is predominantly young, and many
are digital natives. The odds of a 19-year-old Korean undergraduate taking a
paper dictionary down from a shelf in order to resolve a reference query are,
like it or not, vanishingly long, and getting longer. Of course, I too
appreciate the joys of browsing a dictionary,
but<EM><SPAN> </SPAN></EM>then I am (a) in my sixties and (b) a
lexicographer. </SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Besides, as Simon noted, there
are plenty of browsing opportunities in electronic reference materials. In
Macmillan's online dictionary you can (a) click on any word in a definition or
example sentence and go straight to the entry for that word; (b) click on the
'T' thesaurus button at any word, phrase or <EM><SPAN>word sense</SPAN></EM> and
have access to relevant thesaurus data; (c) scroll down the pane to the right of
the entry showing 'Related definitions' (thus at the noun 'box' you could
also, instantly, look up entries such as box in, inbox, box room, box
someone's ears, or think outside the box). </SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">There are winners and losers,
upsides and downsides, whenever things change. But do we want to be like
those people who wrote angry letters to the Times when motorized transport first
came to London at the beginning of the last century, asking about the future
employment prospects for people who made their living by clearing the
horse manure from the streets (I am not making this up). As far as
Macmillan is concerned, better to embrace a future that will come anyway, than
to hang grimly on to a way of doing things whose time is passing. And the
advantages of digital over paper are so great, and the opportunities this medium
offers are only beginning to be exploited.</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">And by the way, how would
today's exchange of views have worked if we'd all stuck to quill pens and the
postal service?</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Michael
Rundell</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Editor-in-Chief</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt">Macmillan
Dictionaries</SPAN><O></O></P></DIV></DIV>
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