A Study On Bilingual Dictionaries And Translation

Bilingual dictionaries bridge the gulf between two languages, serving as an indispensable instrumental assistance to people's foreign language learning. With the rapid growth in international exchanges, bilingual dictionaries are increasingly in demand, and the compilation of bilingual dictionaries is thriving accordingly. Bilingual lexicography becomes a heated branch in the field of lexicography. Up to now, the theoretical framework of bilingual lexicography has been built, and studies or experiments in its various branches are about in full swing with no signs of slowing down. This dissertation, entitled "A Study on Bilingual Dictionaries and Translation", is identified as an interdisciplinary research in the scopes of both bilingual lexicography and translation studies, focusing on the translational problems in bilingual dictionaries. Tentatively, the dissertation aims to disclose the general features of the translation in bilingual dictionaries, discuss specific practical problems and initiate a theoretical framework in researching the translational issues in bilingual dictionaries.The core issue of bilingual dictionaries is to "find in the target language such lexical units as are equivalent to the lexical units of the source language". (Zgusta, 1971:312) In the final analysis, the process of offering equivalents is an operation in the domain of translation, characterized by how to translate lemmas, how to translate citations, how to translate proper names, how to locate translational pairs in bilingual corpora, etc. Although it is recognized that translational studies are well-developed at home and abroad, most of the related theories can scarcely be employed in studying the relationship between translation and bilingual dictionaries. Even today many Chinese lexicographers still claim to have adhered to the maxim of "faithfulness, expressiveness and elegance" proposed by Yan Fu in 1898. Admittedly, this principle can be applicable...