But garde champêtre has a specific unpredictable contrast within the lexical system of French: it contrasts with gendarme. Since French chien = English dog and dog = chien, chien and dog are translation equivalents but since garde champêtre = rural policeman and rural policeman is not included in the English-French dictionary, they are not culturally equivalent.īoth phrases can be understood reasonably well from their constituents and have fairly obvious contrasts with garde urbain in French or with urban policeman in English. In standard lexicographic terminology, a bilingual dictionary definition provides a 'translation equivalent' – 'An expression from a language which has the same meaning as, or can be used in a similar context to, one from another language, and can therefore be used to translate it.' The British lexicographer Robert Ilson gives example definitions from the Collins-Robert French-English English-French Dictionary. It has also been shown that specialized translation dictionaries for learners should include data that help users translate difficult syntactical structures as well as language-specific genre conventions. If the dictionary is intended to help translate texts, it will need to include not only equivalents but also collocations and phrases translated into the relevant target language. If the function is understanding foreign-language texts the dictionary will contain foreign-language entry words and native-language definitions, which have been written so that they can be understood by the intended user groups. In such situations users will require the dictionary to contain different types of data that have been specifically selected for the function in question. A bilingual dictionary works to help users translate texts from one language into another or to help users understand foreign-language texts. The most important challenge for practical and theoretical lexicographers is to define the functions of a bilingual dictionary. In contrast to the bilingual dictionary, a monolingual dictionary defines words and phrases instead of translating them.Ī selection of translation dictionaries published by Collins Other features sometimes present in bilingual dictionaries are lists of phrases, usage and style guides, verb tables, maps and grammar references. In addition to the translation, a bilingual dictionary usually indicates the part of speech, gender, verb type, declension model and other grammatical clues to help a non-native speaker use the word. Bidirectional bilingual dictionaries usually consist of two sections, each listing words and phrases of one language alphabetically along with their translation. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing translation to and from both languages.

Printed bilingual dictionaries come in all sizes and shapes.Ī bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another.

Multilingual dictionaries