Equivalent Discrimination In Domestic-Oriented Chinese-English Dictionaries

In the communicative process of dictionary use,the dictionary user is an important participant and arouses the attention of many lexicographers.It is the users' perspective in lexicography that helps to investigate users' reference needs and skills so as to improve the dictionary compilation.For a long time the relationship between dictionary use and translation has been examined.However,the previous researches attach little importance to the translators' specific reference needs,especially their requirements for equivalent discrimination. As a matter of fact,one single Chinese headword is usually translated into a set of English equivalents in CEDs,and dictionary users may have difficulties in picking up an appropriate one.Some existing dictionaries have put some efforts in this aspect, but the discriminative information is not given comprehensively in most CEDs.In order to present systematic discrimination of English equivalents,this thesis carries out an empirical study to analyze the problems and requirements of trainee translators and proposes a multidimensional model for equivalent discrimination. Some sample entries are designed based on questionnaire surveys and theoretical discussions,and the effectiveness of the sample entries is also tested.Some major findings are concluded in this thesis.From users' perspective,it is quite necessary to provide sufficient semantic distinctive features of English equivalents in CEDs.Semantic nuances of equivalents can be discriminated from multidimensional perspectives(i.e.conceptual,expressive,stylistic,and contextual meaning) by means of definitions,glosses,collocations and examples,labels,and special columns.The thesis also proposed two main categories of sample entries. Although there is not much difference between the effectiveness of these samples,the subjects prefer the second category,i.e.discriminating equivalents in special columns.