[Lexicog] Dictionary

[Miel Slager]

On Saturday, May 14, 2005, 14:19:52, arun wrote:

>    How do people compile a dictionary? Is not this a task that involves
>  a
>  lot of people. What are the qualifications for a person to do such a
>  job?

That depends on the kind of dictionary. If it is a general dictionary of a language and you want to see it finished before you die, you had better organize a group. But if it is a specialized one (e.g. a dictionary of Spanish words followed by prepositions), you might do it by yourself. Requirements:

--Your knowledge of the matter you're working on should be good, and at the same time you should be convinced that it is poor, which is true, as you will discover.

--You need a lot of time and patience, you have to love collecting things and you have to enjoy a splendid relation with your computer, which has to be very stable and to have a lot of memory (both working and storage memory).

--You need a lot of data; you must spend time and money on acquiring a pretty big collection of texts.

--You need specialized computer programs: a) a concordance program to search among your data the things you're looking for; it should accept wild cards and be able to find expressions with other expressions in their horizon (I use one which isn't available anymore, the Austrian made WordExpert) b) a database program fit for the kind of job you want to do: very flexible, maybe AskSam would do (I still use an old version, 5.5, of Trados MultiTerm, which is excellent; unfortunately later versions were not so good; my impression was they simply released a new program under the old name).

Is that a bit of an answer to your question?
Cheers, Emile Slager

Netherlands
url: http://home.wanadoo.nl/e.slager




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