reciprocity for bilingual dictionaries?

[Peter A. McGraw]

I would say there's a more interesting definition of reciprocity in
reference to bilingual dictionaries than the word-for-word notion hazarded
below.  In fact, the lack of one such reciprocity is the subject of one of
the griping letters that I have been meaning to write for years.

A leading (AFAIK THE leading) series of Dutch mono- and bilingual
dictionaries, Wolters Woordenboeken, publishes an English-Dutch and a
Dutch-English dictionary, neither of which indicates the gender of nouns.
Clearly the dictionaries were designed exclusively for Dutch-speaking
users, who already know the noun genders.  For English-speaking users this
lack of reciprocity severely limits their usefulness.  It's too bad,
because otherwise they are excellent dictionaries.  From my point of view
as a native speaker of English, such reciprocity is extremely important,
and its absence downright irrational.  After all, you would think it would
be in the publisher's commercial self-interest to maximize the
dictionaries' usefulness to speakers of two languages instead of just one.
As it is, if I don't know the Dutch equivalent of an English noun, I first
have to look it up in the E-D volume, then in turn look up the result in
the big monolingual Dutch Wolters, which paradoxically DOES give gender,
even though that dictionary is quite properly aimed exclusively at native
Dutch speakers.  So in other words, they forced me to buy three
dictionaries instead of two....(hmm...let's see, what was that I was saying
about commercial self-interest?)

Peter Mc.

--On Wednesday, January 15, 2003 10:36 AM -0500 Peter Sokolowski
<psokolowski at MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM> wrote:

> Hi folks:
>
> In chatting with a colleague the other day we got to wondering about the
> extent to which bilingual dictionaries are truly reciprocal, meaning (I
> guess) that every word used as a translation word has an entry.  I
> submitted that perhaps very small bilingual dictionaries could maintain
> such a policy, but that larger, desk-sized dictionaries would probably
> balloon out of control if a strict policy of reciprocity were attempted.
>
> To what extent is reciprocity desirable?
>
> To what extent is reciprocity feasible?
>
> What's the historical pattern in bilingual dictionaries?
>
> Many thanks,
>
> Cheers,
>
> Peter
>
> Peter A. Sokolowski
> Associate Editor
> Merriam-Webster, Inc.



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu