International Handbook of Modern Lexis and Lexicography

DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-45369-4_6-1
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014

Bilingual Lexicography: Translation Dictionaries

Arleta Adamska-Sałaciak*
Faculty of English, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

Abstract
The present chapter examines the peculiarities of lexicography linking two languages. It addresses
the following broad issues: Can bilingual dictionaries legitimately be called translation dictionaries?
What language pairs do they normally cover? Who uses them? What are the most persistent
problems faced by bilingual lexicography and what time-honored theoretical assumptions are they
grounded in? Why is lexicographic equivalence a problematic notion? How is the bilingual
dictionary currently changing and what is its future likely to be? The discussion is preceded by a
few words of general introduction.

Introduction
The bilingual dictionary is a dictionary par excellence. It was born in response to a genuine practical
need (to understand texts and utterances in a foreign language) and is still predominantly a useful
practical tool rather than – as is often the case with large monolingual dictionaries – an essentially
symbolic object which confers status upon the owner but is rarely taken off the shelf.
Despite the bilingual dictionary’s clearly man-made origins, its historical development in the West
can be thought of as a kind of organic growth. Rather than having been designed in a single step,
with all its current features in place from the start, it evolved gradually from something much more
basic: vernacular explanations (glosses) of individual foreign words and phrases, written by
medieval scribes in between the lines and in the margins of Latin manuscripts. Later, the native
glosses, paired with the foreign words they were meant to explain, started to be collected into
separate lists (glossaries). Later still, when the glossaries had grown too large to make efficient
consultation possible, their compilers began to arrange the contents either alphabetically (at first
only according to the first letter of every word) or thematically. It is at that point that we start talking
of the first dictionaries.
Gradually, in addition to dictionaries with Latin as the source language, bilingual dictionaries
appeared in Europe whose source language was one actually spoken (French, Spanish, and so on).
To begin with, they comprised only one part, leading from L2 (a foreign language) to L1 (the
intended users’ native language); the L1-L2 (native-foreign) part was always a later development.
Unless indicated otherwise, our overview of the field of bilingual lexicography will be concerned
with the “complete,” two-way dictionary (L2-L1 and L1-L2).

*Email: arleta@wa.amu.edu.pl

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Description

Bilingual Dictionaries = Translation Dictionaries?

It is common practice in the metalexicographic literature for the two terms to be used interchange-
ably. There is, however, one notable text in which the equation has been questioned: the 1940 essay
by the Russian linguist Lev N. Ščerba (1995). A practicing (Russian-French) lexicographer himself,
Ščerba argued that only the L1-L2 dictionary could properly be considered a translation dictionary,
whereas the L2-L1 dictionary should rather be called explanatory. His reasoning was that the two
perform essentially different functions: translation from the user’s native into a foreign language
(L1-L2 dictionary) as opposed to explaining the meanings of foreign-language words and expres-
sions (L2-L1 dictionary). When one starts from one’s L1, he argued, the meaning to be expressed,
encoded in a particular L1 lexical item, is clearly understood – all that is needed is a corresponding
L2 item which can express the same meaning. The lexicons of different languages being essentially
incommensurable, such an L2 counterpart will usually be no more than an approximation of the L1
unit, but it should suffice for the purposes of basic translation; anyway, under the circumstances, this
is the best that can be done.
By contrast, in the L2-L1 dictionary, Ščerba believed that discursive L1 explanations could do a
much better job than the necessarily imprecise L1 equivalents which cannot but misrepresent L2
meanings. Accordingly, he postulated that the practice of offering one-word native-language
equivalents be abandoned in the L2-L1 dictionary, in favor of something resembling monolingual
definitions written in the users’ L1.
Both practicing lexicographers and theoreticians have remained largely immune to those sugges-
tions. Just as in L1-L2 dictionaries, source-language (SL) headwords in L2-L1 dictionaries are
normally supplied with target-language (TL) equivalents rather than with extensive explanations of
meaning, and the practice of referring to bilingual dictionaries as translation dictionaries is alive and
well. Apart from the sheer force of tradition, part of the reason may be that the vast majority of
bilingual dictionaries produced to date have been bidirectional, that is, designed to cater for speakers
of both languages at once. In such a dictionary, what is the L1-L2 part for one group of users acts as
the L2-L1 part for the other, and vice versa. Consequently, it is not possible to vary the treatment in
the two parts, making the foreign-native part more explanatory in nature so as to give the user a better
idea of L2 meanings. This may soon change, since, with the switch to the electronic medium, not
only making monodirectional dictionaries (i.e., dictionaries addressed exclusively to the speakers of
one of the languages) but also customizing individual entries to suit individual users’ needs and
preferences is rapidly becoming much easier.
Even without making an excursus into the future, but simply by examining the properties of
existing bilingual dictionaries, one can arrive at the conclusion that the term translation dictionaries
may be something of a misnomer or, at best, an oversimplification. First of all, while the average
bilingual dictionary entry can go some way toward helping us understand the meaning of the SL
word or phrase in isolation, and at times also suggest a working TL equivalent, it does not always
guarantee a correct translation in context. Through no fault of either the lexicographer or the
user – that is, even if the dictionary is a good one and the user knows how to use it to the best
advantage – successful translation is by no means the standard outcome of bilingual dictionary
consultation. The reasons for that lie in certain immanent properties of language and meaning about
which more will be said later.
Secondly, it is obvious that bilingual dictionaries perform many different tasks besides translation.
In particular, a good monodirectional dictionary is not just a quest for sameness (equivalence)

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between the lexical units of the two languages, but also an attempt to identify areas of convergence
and divergence between the respective lexicons. Being made aware of the differences between L1
and L2 is something language learners need just as much as, and sometimes even more than, being
issued with pairs of interlingual equivalents (see, e.g., Augustyn 2013, p. 365). In other words, not
all dictionary consultations are motivated by the desire to solve an immediate communicative
problem: some happen in what Wiegand (1999, p. 76) called “didactic look-up situations.” This
implies that, apart from being a tool enabling quick reference, a bilingual dictionary should double as
a teaching aid: it should serve both a communicative function (satisfying users’ information needs)
and a cognitive one (facilitating in-depth study of the foreign language). While translation is often
relevant in the former case, it need not be so in the latter.
Finally, in view of the direction lexicography as a whole is taking, especially given the likely
future integration of dictionary components with other functionalities, it becomes pointless to single
out the translation aspect of bilingual dictionaries as somehow still defining the genre.

Language Pairs Covered by Bilingual Dictionaries

It would be unrealistic to expect that a bilingual dictionary will by now have been written for every
possible pair of natural languages. Far from it. Since the production of dictionaries has always been
governed by practical considerations, the traditionally privileged group comprises major world
languages, i.e., those which are widely spoken and which many people are interested in learning.
Such languages have been paired with numerous others, so that it should not be very difficult to find,
e.g., an English-Lx, Lx-English dictionary, where Lx can be virtually any language. Another group
in which bilingual lexicographers have understandably been interested includes, on the one hand,
dead languages associated with important ancient cultures and, on the other, so-called exotic
languages.
Any language which is still alive but neither widely spoken nor particularly exotic is unlikely to
have received nearly as much attention. This is now beginning to change, albeit slowly. Given that
the costs of online publication are a fraction of the costs of producing a printed volume, more and
more dictionaries can be compiled for language pairs for which the demand remains very modest. As
a taste of what is to come, some instances of bilingual dictionaries covering unusual language
combinations can be examined at http://www.dicts.info or at http://www.owid.de/obelex/dict.

Users and Uses of Bilingual Dictionaries

Despite the dynamic development of research into dictionary use, the results of that research have
impacted our knowledge only in certain specific areas. Thus, we have learned a great deal about what
happens when college students and, to a lesser extent, high school students use bilingual dictionar-
ies, those being the groups on which most studies have focused. As far as the population at large is
concerned, however, common sense and personal experience must, for the moment, remain our main
guide to the nature of bilingual dictionary usership.
In the absence of evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable to assume that the two major groups
of users of L2-L1 dictionaries comprise, on the one hand, beginner learners (for whom turning to a
monolingual learner’s dictionary, written entirely in L2, is not an option) and, on the other, very
advanced students, such as translators or language teachers at the highest level, including those with
near-native command of the foreign language. For this latter, advanced group, knowledge of an L2
word or phrase, even when both passive and active, is frequently not enough: what they need is an
actual L1 equivalent which can, for instance, be put into a written translation or used in interpreting.
Availing oneself of a bilingual dictionary makes eminent sense especially when time is of the
essence. Instead of racking one’s brain for the best possible equivalent, the translator/interpreter can

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concentrate on the big picture, such as figuring out the overall meaning of the passage to be
translated and devising the best strategy for rendering it in L1. (An even more obvious case are
translators of specialized texts, who, not being domain experts, need L1 equivalents for L2 terms
whose meaning they do not fully grasp.)
When it comes to L1-L2 dictionaries, the main beneficiaries are, again, beginner learners, for
whom there is literally no alternative to the bilingual dictionary. Upon reflection, though, it becomes
evident that virtually everyone needs L1-L2 dictionaries, irrespective of their L2 proficiency (for an
in-depth discussion, see Adamska-Sałaciak 2010b). Apart from the obvious case of culture-specific
L1 vocabulary, no suggestions for dealing with which can ever be found in a monolingual dictionary
of L2, there are more general reasons for this state of affairs. No matter how good a person’s grasp of
a foreign language is, they will not always be able to come up with the L2 lexical item they need on a
particular occasion. They may know the item in question, in the sense of having it stored somewhere
in their mental lexicon, but this is not tantamount to being able to retrieve it at will. This is precisely
when a bilingual L1-L2 dictionary, leading to the desired item via the user’s native language, comes
to the rescue. (An alternative search route would be to start with another L2 item, a near-synonym of
the one that eludes us, i.e., to proceed in the same way a native speaker would. This, of course,
crucially depends on the prior existence of a near-synonym and on the speaker’s ability to recall it,
and therefore will not always work. Importantly, retrieval problems are not limited to a person’s
second language; even within the mother tongue, one is not always able to access the lexical unit one
wants, as evident, for instance, in tip-of-the-tongue phenomena.)
On a more general level, there is a growing, albeit belated, realization (see, e.g., Augustyn 2013
and the works cited therein) that there can be no L2 acquisition without recourse to the learner’s L1.
Hence the indispensability of lexical resources – especially, though not exclusively, bilingual
dictionaries – which help students make the necessary connections between the unknown (the L2
to be learned) and the already known (their L1). So-called direct methods, which make a point of
avoiding the learner’s native language at all costs – and which, until quite recently, had dominated
the language-teaching scene – of necessity concentrate not on the most frequent, and thereby most
needed, lexical items but on those that can be easily presented to the learners, either through visual
aids or with the help of a limited amount of basic L2 vocabulary. It is genuinely puzzling how
methods which explicitly condemn the use of the native language in the classroom, effectively
banning bilingual dictionaries, could ever have been considered beneficial in the teaching and
learning of foreign languages. (Needless to say, the view was never universally accepted; see,
e.g., Tomaszczyk 1983.)

Assumptions Behind (and Challenges for) Bilingual Dictionary Making

The rationale behind bilingual dictionaries has always been that languages are mutually translatable,
that is, that any content expressed in any language can be expressed in any other. Most linguists
would agree that this is a sound assumption. However, the (usually implicit) further assumption,
namely, that a bilingual dictionary is not only a necessary prerequisite but also a sufficient condition
for successful interlingual translation, rests on a profound misunderstanding, both of the nature of
human language as such and of the nature of the relationships between different languages.
Contrary to the commonsense view, which has for centuries gone unchallenged and still prevails
in lay circles, lexical units are not straightforward labels for objectively identifiable, non-
overlapping portions of extralinguistic reality, each additionally associated with a unique concept
(meaning) in the native speaker’s mind. As pointed out already by Democritus (460–370 BC), the
following kinds of situation render false that naïve belief: the same sequence of sounds may be
associated with two or more meanings; different words within one language may have the same

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meaning; a given language may have no single word for a certain simple or familiar idea
(Householder 1995, p. 93). What all this amounts to is that there is no universal one-to-one
correspondence between form and meaning (i.e., between word/expression and concept), nor
between either of those and individual objects or events independently existing in the world.
The most important of Democritus’ observations pertains to the possibility of one sequence of
sounds (form) having more than one meaning. It is, in fact, more than a mere possibility: most items
of general language do indeed appear to be polysemous. According to the cognitive linguistic model
of language (see, e.g., Langacker 2002) – which, incidentally, in many crucial respects echoes the
tenets of traditional diachronic semantics (Geeraerts 1988) – a lexical item is typically associated
with a variety of interrelated senses. Within such a network of senses, there is usually
one – sometimes more than one – core (prototypical) sense from which the remaining senses have
developed over time, whether through extension (generalization), narrowing (specialization), or
figurative use (usually via metaphor or metonymy).
Accepting the above as the most convincing account of lexical meaning in existence, it would be
extremely naïve to expect the sense networks of two lexical items coming from two different
languages to be completely identical. Yet this is precisely the premise underlying any bilingual
dictionary entry of the form:

XSL YTL

where XSL is the source-language headword and YTL is its sole target-language equivalent. Since
there are many bilingual dictionaries where the majority of entries have precisely that form, we
cannot but conclude that, strictly speaking, the whole genre is built on rather shaky foundations.
(This applies also to bilingual terminological dictionaries, since, again contrary to popular belief,
specialist vocabulary is not radically different from nontechnical language. As convincingly dem-
onstrated by Temmermann (2000), outside certain normative contexts, intralingual monosemy and
perfect interlingual correspondence turn out to be remarkably rare in terminology.)
What, if anything, can be done to remedy the situation? Obviously, no amount of progress in
bilingual lexicography can ever compensate for the intrinsic incommensurability of the lexicons of
different languages. Nonetheless, good lexicographers have long been trying to construct bilingual
dictionary entries in a manner which reflects the complexity of interlingual lexical relationships as
faithfully as possible; some commonly employed strategies are discussed in Adamska-Sałaciak
(2014). Additionally – and more controversially – it could, perhaps, be argued that the time is now
ripe to make it one of the tasks of the bilingual dictionary to raise its users’ awareness of the problem
of anisomorphism (i.e., lack of one-to-one interlingual correspondence) instead of continuing to
sweep it under the carpet. Today’s users, at home in the digital world and thus familiar with tools
such as Google Translate – which entails being aware of the imperfections of those tools – may be
better equipped to deal with this unwelcome revelation than their twentieth-century and earlier
predecessors.
How might the consciousness-raising exercise work in practice? Instead of being obliged by the
requirements of the genre to pretend that every SL item can be supplied with a TL equivalent,
whenever interlingual asymmetry makes any potential equivalent candidate too far-fetched and
thereby misleading, the bilingual lexicographer should be allowed to explicitly inform the
user – either inside the entry itself or in an accompanying note – of the existence of a TL lexical
gap (see LSW, especially the Polish-English part, for examples). It seems that, apart from tradition,
the main practical reason why such admissions were in the past deemed impossible was the space
restrictions imposed by the printed medium.

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Of course, one new problem to which the proposed relaxation of rules might give rise would be
the temptation to fall back on the no-equivalent available strategy whenever the lexicographer
encounters even a minor difficulty. To minimize the chances of that happening, the dictionary’s style
guide should make it abundantly clear that the strategy ought to be treated as a last resort and
employed primarily when dealing with culture-specific vocabulary or when a particular grammatical
category (e.g., ideophones) does not exist in the target language.
Also, no matter how futile the quest for an equivalent, the user must never be left without further
assistance. After declaring the impossibility of providing an equivalent (and, when deemed useful,
explaining why this is the case), the lexicographer should proceed to suggest ways of patching up the
asymmetry, employing any one of a number of well-tried techniques – for instance, embedding the
difficult item in a wider context and translating the whole lot (thereby aiming at functional
equivalence; for examples involving ideophones, see OZSD and the discussion in De Schryver
2009, as well as Adamska-Sałaciak 2011).
There are other reasons, apart from anisomorphism, why the traditional structure of the bilingual
dictionary – basically, a list of allegedly exact lexical correspondences between two languages – is
hardly a perfect reflection of how meaning is distributed intra- and interlingually. One problem, not
entirely unrelated to the lack of isomorphism, is that units of meaning are not always coextensive
with orthographic words: they may be both smaller (morphemes) and larger (multi-word units);
furthermore, different languages make different choices in particular cases. Another difficulty stems
from the vagueness of meaning – an inherent property of natural language, highly advantageous
from the point of view of the ease of language acquisition and language use, but highly problematic
when it comes to writing dictionary entries, whether mono- or bilingual (see Adamska-Sałaciak
2013, pp. 222–223).
In view of all this, it is truly remarkable that so many bilingual dictionaries have been written over
the centuries and that so many people have found them helpful. Perverse as it may sound, perhaps it
is just as well that the authors, especially of the early dictionaries, have mostly been unaware of the
problems identified above: had they realized the enormity of what they were setting out to do, we
might not have any bilingual or multilingual dictionaries to speak of.

The Vexed Question of Equivalence

One consequence of the problems discussed in the preceding section is that the main idea of the
bilingual dictionary – that of providing a perfect TL equivalent for each (sense of a) SL
headword – turns out not to be a realistic goal but rather something toward which lexicographers
can merely strive. Extensive study of large amounts of data from different bilingual dictionaries
strongly suggests that the items proposed as lexicographic equivalents are not all of a kind;
consequently, attempts have been made in the metalexicographic literature to group them into
more or less distinct classes. One such classification, inspired by Zgusta (1971) and developed by
Adamska-Sałaciak (2006, 2010a, 2011), features four equivalence types: cognitive, translational,
explanatory, and functional, briefly characterized below.
A cognitive equivalent has a high explanatory potential, i.e., it is capable of faithfully rendering
the meaning of the SL headword. Its identification is often more or less effortless, because it tends to
spring to mind immediately after a bilingual speaker (lexicographer) has been presented with an SL
headword. Thanks to that, cognitive equivalents are frequently identical in different dictionaries for
the same language pair, which gives rise to the feeling that they are somehow “real” or “true.” On the
downside, a cognitive equivalent is often too general to work as a translation of the SL item in a
particular context.

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A translational equivalent, by contrast, while not being wholly identical in meaning to the SL
headword, produces a good translation when substituted for it in a particular context (not least
because it has similar combinatory properties). As there is no upper limit on the number of contexts
in which a given SL lexeme may occur, the number of its potential TL translational equivalents may
also be quite high. A bilingual dictionary can only supply a few such equivalents per sense, zooming
in on those usable in the most typical contexts in which the SL item occurs.
Unlike a cognitive or a translational equivalent, an explanatory equivalent is not an established TL
unit, but a free TL combination: a succinct paraphrase of the meaning of the SL headword. It
resembles a mini-definition in the target language, except that it is normally shorter.
Finally, functional equivalence is a relation holding not between the meanings of individual
lexical items but between the meanings of longer stretches of text. Typically, the TL text portion
either contains a TL word of a different grammatical category than the SL headword or features no
element whatsoever directly corresponding to that headword.
The boundaries between different equivalence types are not always sharp in that one and the same
item may, on occasion, be a realization of more than one type (illustrations can be found in
Adamska-Sałaciak (2006, pp. 106–117), and forthcoming). Rather than rendering the whole clas-
sification useless, this is believed to be an inevitable consequence of the nature of interlingual
relationships. The important thing is that there are two distinct, complementary criteria at work:
semantic and distributional (functional). According to the semantic criterion, two items are consid-
ered equivalent if they have the same meaning (in the sense of having identical definitions, rather
like synonyms in the same language). According to the distributional criterion, two items are
considered equivalent if they can be used as each other’s translations in context(s). Ideally, an
equivalent supplied by a bilingual dictionary should fulfill both criteria at once, that is, it should both
explain the headword’s meaning and be substitutable for the headword in context. This happens
occasionally (especially with autosemantic items, i.e., those whose meaning is largely context-
independent), but is by no means the rule. On the whole, cognitive and explanatory equivalents meet
the former criterion, while translational and functional equivalents meet the latter.
Assuming that, most of the time, only one of the requirements can be satisfied, which of them
should be judged more important? Two possible answers suggest themselves. Considering the issue
from the point of view of the two parts of a bilingual dictionary, it would seem that the semantic
criterion prevails in the L2-L1 part (whose main task is to faithfully render SL meanings), while the
functional criterion takes precedence in the L1-L2 part (which should equip the user with ready-
made solutions in the form of L2 items usable in their own linguistic production).
But we can also adopt a wider perspective, taking into account the tendencies observable in
present-day bilingual lexicography. Given how the dictionary as a stand-alone product gradually
recedes into the background, merging with different other kinds of language resources available
online (or, in general, in digital rather than book form), it seems fair to say that the future belongs to
translational and functional equivalence. This is true at least insofar as the average user is concerned,
one who, more often than not, needs lexical and other linguistic information to solve a particular
local problem (thus satisfying a concrete communicative need), and expects to be able to find that
information anytime, anywhere. Linguistic scholars and word aficionados will, of course, always be
interested in cognitive and explanatory equivalence, but both these (frequently overlapping) groups
have always been, and are likely to remain, in the minority.
One of the more exciting prospects related to the issue of equivalence is that, as envisioned by
Atkins (1996, p. 526), in bilingual dictionaries of the future, the more sophisticated users (we should
perhaps add: those with enough time on their hands) will be able to avail themselves of direct access
to copious corpus citations. This, in some cases at least, ought to make it possible for them to make

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their own decisions regarding equivalence, instead of always having to rely on the lexicographer’s
suggestions.

Current Tendencies and Likely Future Developments

The bilingual dictionary has a great deal in common with other lexicographic genres, notably with
the monolingual learners’ dictionary. Consequently, numerous currently observable trends and
predictions for the future – hinted at in the preceding sections and featuring prominently in other
contributions to this handbook – are not restricted to bilingual lexicography. For this reason, as well
as because of space limitations, only some of the relevant issues will be addressed at this point.
Further inspiration can be sought, for example, in the landmark papers by Atkins (1996) and De
Schryver (2003) or in the magisterial overview of the state of the art by Rundell (2012).
By far the most important development in twentieth-century dictionary making, hailed by many
as a genuine revolution, was the shift from introspection-based to corpus-based compilation, whose
beginnings go back to the 1980s. It would be premature to claim that all of bilingual lexicography
has already been revolutionized as a result, but there is no doubt that a twenty-first-century bilingual
dictionary worthy of the name cannot be compiled without recourse to an electronic corpus, or rather
two corpora: one for each of its object languages.
Corpora provide evidence for SL meanings and for the frequency of occurrence of lexical items.
They also help lexicographers identify common syntactic patterns and characteristic phraseological
combinations, to draw up representative, up-to-date word lists, to demonstrate the behavior of
headwords in typical contexts, and to illustrate that behavior with authentic examples of usage.
There is, in addition, an important use to which corpora can be put specifically by the bilingual
lexicographer. Visible improvements in the precision of lexicographic equivalents could no doubt be
achieved by analyzing huge amounts of concordance data from parallel corpora (i.e., corpora
consisting of SL texts and their translations) and/or by trawling comparable SL and TL corpora
(i.e., corpora containing texts of the same type, from the same period, and dealing with the same
topic) for recurrent interlingual correspondences. Unfortunately, the limited availability of corpora
of the right kind remains, for the time being, an insurmountable obstacle; to this author’s knowledge,
no bilingual dictionaries have yet been compiled exclusively in this way. It is hard to speculate about
when things are likely to change, for, even when the data is all there, the process of corpus-based
equivalent identification will remain extremely time-consuming and, as a result, prohibitively costly.
The more components of that process can be automated (for instance, through the further develop-
ment of tools such as the Sketch Engine (http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/)), the greater the chances
of success.
Among the more immediate benefits of the availability of huge amounts of corpus data, one
should mention the relative ease of introducing more syntagmatic context into the dictionary entries,
including L2 collocations and other conventionalized multi-word units containing the L2 headword.
The pragmatic properties of L2 headwords, such as their register and style, can also be described in
more detail and with more confidence, the corpus providing direct evidence in support of
(or sometimes contradicting) the lexicographer’s intuitions. All this goes a long way toward
realizing the idea of the so-called active dictionary, i.e., one which reliably assists the users’ own
linguistic production.
In sum, the computer revolution has transformed the way dictionaries are compiled, offering
access to information – e.g., on the frequency of occurrence of lexical items or on their selectional
preferences – not normally available to individual introspection, as well as increasing lexicogra-
phers’ options with regard to the kind of content they might want to put in the dictionary.

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Apart from the rewards of the computer revolution, lexicography is now experiencing the effects
of a more recent, digital revolution. One such effect is that online bilingual dictionaries for numerous
language pairs now exist (or are in preparation) which, for economic reasons, would have taken
much longer to materialize in print; as an example, consider the reference works developed in
connection with the Norwegian LEXIN project (http://decentius.hit.uib.no/lexin.html?ui-lang=
eng&om-prosjektet).
The long-term effects of the digital revolution are generally expected to be truly spectacular,
culminating in the disappearance of dictionaries as we know them. The consensus among experts is
that stand-alone dictionaries will eventually become “invisible,” due to integration with other
linguistic and nonlinguistic data sources. The integration will proceed through the merging of
different types of dictionaries (bilingual with monolingual, semasiological with onomasiological,
general-purpose with terminological (LSP), etc.), through the consolidation of lexical description
and encyclopedic information, through the incorporation of dictionary content into CALL materials,
and through the embedding of dictionaries in other software (e.g., automatic translation tools) and
hardware (e.g., e-readers). Some of these processes are already well under way in the field of LSP
lexicography; as an example, consider the ARTES project (https://artes.eila.univ-paris-diderot.fr/) in
which a multilingual LSP dictionary is generated from terminological and phraseological databases
(details in K€ubler and Pecman 2012).
Within the niche that the “invisible” dictionary is shortly going to occupy, its coverage can be
made much more thorough than in traditional, paper publications, and the criteria for inclusion are
certain to become relaxed. This is partly a result of dictionary makers not having to worry about
space restrictions and partly a consequence of their trying to meet the growing expectations of
dictionary users. Today’s young users expect to be able to find information about anything and
everything – including anything lexical – that they happen to come across, whether in the real or in
the virtual world. This means, among other things, that lexicographers need to be generous (and
quick) with the provision of lexical innovations, both lexical neologisms (i.e., new words) and
semantic ones (i.e., new senses of existing words); in the bilingual context, it implies being ready to
admit incipient, noninstitutionalized SL borrowings as TL equivalents in the L2-L1 dictionary (e.g.,
see Adamska-Sałaciak 2014).
A closely related issue is that updating dictionary content online can be a more or less continuous
process. It is also possible that some of the updating will happen through crowdsourcing. Although
user-generated content is unlikely to feature as prominently in bilingual as in monolingual dictio-
naries (or, rather, functionalities), there is some room for collaborative lexicography here, too, with
users being encouraged to suggest new items for inclusion and, to a limited extent, to propose
equivalent candidates, especially for new specialist terminology and for highly informal and/or
slang words and expressions.
Many more possibilities have been described in the literature and/or discussed at recent lexico-
graphic conferences; new ideas are doubtless being conceived as we write, but there is only room to
mention a couple of particularly intriguing ones here. In a now classic paper, Atkins (1996) sketched
the logic behind what she called a virtual dictionary: one which exists only at the point of access,
when the user formulates a query (the answer to which is generated through a system of hyperlinks
from the databases of two languages, compiled according to the same theoretical framework). At the
2013 conference on e-lexicography, Tavast presented the theoretical assumptions behind an inno-
vative bilingual dictionary (with Estonian and Latvian), work on which is currently in progress.
Although organized in the traditional (semasiological) way from the point of view of the end user,
the dictionary is being compiled in an unorthodox manner, starting from an onomasiological data
structure (again, the prerequisite is the absolute internal consistency of the databases for both

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languages). The delineation of the rationale behind the project and, especially, the discussion
following it (http://eki.ee/elex2013/videos/) are an excellent illustration of how exciting life can
be for a bilingual lexicographer in the twenty-first century.

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Dictionaries
[LSW] Fisiak, J., et al. (2011). Longman Słownik Współczesny Angielsko-Polski Polsko-Angielski.
Harlow: Pearson Education.
[OZSD] De Schryver, G.-M., et al. (2010). Oxford Bilingual school dictionary: IsiZulu and English.
Cape Town: Oxford University Press.

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