Potential Improvements To The Definitions In E-C Dictionaries Of Journalistic English

The practices of compiling ECDJEs in China started in the 1990s,and the quality of the existing ECDJEs is still far from satisfactory.This research is devoted to improving the definitions in ECDJEs.The definition problems in ECDJEs are expected to be solved if the following modification and improvement are made:Firstly,the phonetic transcriptions are given in ECDJEs.Phonetic transcriptions are part of lexical definitions.It is advocated to supply phonetic transcriptions to facilitate dictionary users' memory for headwords.Secondly,congruent Chinese equivalents of the headwords are enumerated.Thirdly,etymological information is provided and prominently labeled. It is quite difficult to find Chinese equivalents and it is almost impossible to offer absolute equivalents in ECDJEs,because many headwords in ECDJEs are cultural specific words or loan words.The compilers of ECDJEs have to solve the problem by virtue of other methods.One of the effective solutions is to provide etymological information in the definition.Fourthly,giving encyclopedic definition in ECDJEs is a good practice.A very important reason why ECDJEs needs encyclopedic definition is that many proper nouns and technical terms are included in ECDJEs and these words or expressions are usually difficult for average readers to understand without encyclopedic definition.And lastly,cross-references are covered in the definitions to interrelate the definitions of related entries.This research is done to justify and explore the problems in the definitions in ECDJEs to make them serve the users better.