reciprocity for bilingual dictionaries?

[Wendalyn Nichols]

Complete reciprocity isn't truly possible because languages don't have
one-to-one correspondence of individual terms, let alone idioms and
collocations. For instance, in Benjamin's example below, there would not be
a headword for the compound "clothes changing day" on the English side of
an E-J dictionary, because this is not a recognized compound in English.
However, a good dictionary would show such terms as glossed examples at the
most relevant entry--usually the first or core noun in a compound or phrase.
On projects that, from the outset, are meant to aid the student in both
directions--ones that have both an L1-L2 and an L2-L1 side--it is now
possible, and indeed desirable, to use electronic sweeps to help you
determine if the words used on one side are represented on the other. But
this only gets you so far; there's no substitute for carefully developed
headword lists that are all but complete before a project starts, so that
the compilers of each side have both lists to refer to.

By the way, Benjamin, DeLaurenti's Deli in the Pike Place Market brought
the recipe for tiramisu into its newsletter for ordinary Seattleites many
moons ago--at least by the early 80s when I briefly worked there! Of
course, since your tiramisu is "fancy", maybe we all could use the recipe? ;-)

Wendalyn Nichols

At 02:25 PM 1/15/03 -0800, Benjamin Barrett wrote:
>This has long been a point of irritation for me, too.
>
>Use any Japanese to English dictionary and you'll find all sorts of
>interesting cultural items. But if you forget the Japanese word after
>you look it up, good luck because E to J dictionaries don't include
>cultural words like clothes changing day (i.e., summer to winter and
>vice-versa) and summer kimono (yukata). I assume they aren't included
>because you don't run into those sorts of words in English corpora. The
>problem is that the student needs those words really desperately.
>
>The J/E dictionary quality has gotten better over the years (and the new
>Green Goddess by Kenkyusha in May promises to be better yet), and more
>of those items are being included, but it's still a nightmare for the
>student.
>
>Benjamin Barrett
>Bringing fancy tiramisu and mont blanc to Seattle
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: American Dialect Society
> > [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Peter A. McGraw
> > Sent: Wednesday, 15 January, 2003 14:08
> > To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> > Subject: Re: reciprocity for bilingual dictionaries?
> >
> >
> > 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.