How Can English-Chinese Dictionaries Be More Useful To Translators?

Bilingual dictionaries are closely related to translation in nature, since one of the most important tasks of bilingual dictionaries is to supply assistance to translation and rare translation can be accomplished without the consultation of BDs.However, the existing BDs are far from satisfactory from the perspective of translators and can not well meet their real needs. This may be caused by the limitation of the traditional paradigm of BDs, which results in their deficiencies in providing accurate and adequate information. Moreover, lexicography and translatology have stood apart since long. In such situation, the present study attempts to bring about a rapprochement between the two fields so as to strengthen the translation-oriented function of BDs.Based on the theory of User Perspective, the present thesis pinpoints the English-Chinese dictionary (ECD) as the object of the research and adopts a method of empirical study, which can be divided into three stages. The first stage concentrates on analyzing the existing theoretical and practical experiences of both translators and lexicographers. Then in the second stage, an empirical study is conducted to testify the value of BDs, and explore translators' needs for them. On the basis of the above study, an ideal entry model will be built up in the last stage to integrate the three different kinds of information needed by translators. The model necessarily consists of three modules, that is, semantic module, pragmatic module and cultural module. The three modules respectively handle with the conceptual meaning, pragmatic meaning and cultural meaning of headwords in the source language.In the conclusion, the thesis indicates some research values, innovations,...