Optimized Design Of Cultural Notes In Bilingual Dictionaries

Language is a symbolic communication system, which is an important carrier of culture and even a part of culture. As a language can reflect a given culture, lexicon in a language will inevitably have cultural connotation. In foreign language teaching and learning, the importance of the relationship between language and culture in intercultural communication has gradually been recognized.Bilingual dictionaries deal with two language systems as well as two cultures. By coordinating the lexical units of one language with those of another language which are equivalent, a bilingual dictionary can act as a decoder of the source language and an encoder for messages in the target language. Therefore, the bilingual dictionary serves as a bridge between two languages and two cultures.As interdiscipline develops, bilingual lexicography is no longer an isolated subject and inevitably involves interdisciplinary knowledge, intercultural communication in particular. Then, under the background of globalization, in the era of online dictionary, in order to facilitate intercultural communication, what optimized design of cultural notes should bilingual dictionaries adopt for better cultural information?This paper first explores the current situation of cultural notes in bilingual dictionaries, and then analyzes the existing problems. After that, combining bilingual lexicography and intercultural communication, the paper puts forward optimized design of cultural notes:in the sense of content, in addition to providing accurate and sufficient cultural information for better understanding culture-related words, more important is to fill in the blank of cultural comparison; in the sense of form,"Culture Contrast" is impressive, systematic and makes the dictionary a whole text. Moreover,"web link" gets rid of the space limitations and out-of-date characteristic of printed dictionaries and brings unlimited possibilities to cultural notes.