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Bilingual Dictionaries for
Learners
Martyn Back
 Manrtyn Back was born near Stratford-Upon-Avon,
England. He studied
French at Lancaster University
and decided to live in Paris for a
while when he graduated. 23 years later he has still not found a good reason
to leave. After several years teaching English, translating and acting, he
began working on large bilingual dictionaries, first at Larousse, then at
Dictionnaires Le Robert, where he is now editorial director in the bilingual
department. In 2002 he created the Junior Bilingue, a successful new
learners' bilingual dictionary. When he is not working, Martyn can be found
cooking for friends, hiking through various wildernesses (lately the Sahara
in Mauritania and Libya) or chugging along the Mediterranean coast in an old
Provençal fishing boat moored at his second home in La Ciotat..
mjback@lerobert.com
 Le Robert & Collins Junior Bilingue
First in English
dictionnaire
français-anglais anglais-français
Direction : Martyn Back
1202 pages
ISBN 2 85 036 816 4
Dictionnaires Le Robert, Paris 2002
www.lerobert.fr
In 2002 Dictionnaires Le Robert produced a new
bilingual dictionary designed for pre-intermediate learners of English, the
Junior Bilingue (since renamed First in English). Unlike most standard
bilingual dictionaries available in France, it is asymmetrical (the "encoding" and
"decoding" sides are presented in different ways) and designed
specifically for French people learning English (ie, all the metalanguage is
in French and the text is built around known problems encountered by learners).
The dictionary is now widely used in French schools, and similar texts have
been produced for French native learners of Spanish and German, and
(published by Vox) Spanish native learners of French and English. What
follows is an outline of some key issues that determined the editorial
orientations of this project.
1. A production dictionary
This book was designed first and
foremost as an aid to target language production – what bilingual
lexicographers term "encoding". The encoding dimension in standard European
bilingual dictionaries has been steadily systematised since the publication
of the Collins-Robertin the late seventies (1978, 6e 2002),
with its network of synonymic and contextual indicators, its emphasis on
collocational patterns and its wealth of carefully selected, corpus-based
example sentences. But Collins-Robert and its rivals are reference works
designed for relatively sophisticated users. Their entries are highly coded,
much of the information they give is abbreviated or implicit, and they assume
a good deal of prior knowledge on the part of their readers (at the very
least, an acquaintance with the "how to use" section at the
beginning of the book). Using a bilingual dictionary as an encoding tool is a
tricky business, even for the experienced user. The encoding user is always,
to a greater or lesser extent according to his/her level of linguistic
competence, stepping into the unknown; translators know that to lift a
foreign language term from a dictionary without further cross-checking is fraught
with danger, and most teachers have anecdotes about the hilarious misuse of
dictionaries. A user-friendly dictionary – and a fortiori a bilingual
learners' dictionary – must do all it can to reduce this risk factor,
lighting the reader's way as he or she gropes towards proficiency.
The Junior attempts to achieve this in several different ways. Instead of
baldly presenting the target-language equivalent of a given word, it first
shows the headword 'in action' – in a translated example sentence with
no distracting metalanguage. The example sentences are designed to emphasize
points relating to the headword equivalent (prepositional collocations of
verbs, uncountability of nouns, use of articles, grammatical behaviour) which
students need to understand and learn. Facing these example sentences, in a
separate column, we find the translation of the headword used in the example,
followed by notes in French that draw attention to specific points (register,
syntax, pronunciation and so on). The presence of this second column means
that information that is implicit in standard dictionaries can be made
explicit for the learner. In standard dictionaries, for example, French
numerals (deux, quinze) are translated by English numerals (two, fifteen),
and the reader is expected to know that where dates are concerned English
uses ordinals (the second, the sixteenth). In the Junior, this is made
explicit via example sentences and an accompanying note in the right-hand
column. The two-column layout is an effective way of uncluttering the
dictionary entry and clarifying metalinguistic commentary.
2. Focusing on essentials: the reception/decoding side
Space constraints, lexicographical conventions (not all of them
indispensable, or even particularly useful) and economic realities (bilingual
dictionaries typically being expected to pay their way in two linguistic
communities at once), mean that at least some of the information provided in
a bilingual entry is likely to be irrelevant to a given user. Worse, such a
surfeit of information can present an obstacle to understanding. The example
below illustrates this:
black /blӕk/ 1. n (= colour)
noir (m). 2. adj noir. ♦
Black (= person) Noir(e) (m)/(f)
This classically well-formed one-line entry is both basic (in terms of the
rudimentary lexical information it contains) and complex (in terms of the
highly coded way in which the information is delivered). Riddled as it is
with metalinguistic codes, abbreviations and symbols – eg no fewer than five
pairs of brackets – it contains a good deal of superfluous information for
the French native who just wants to know what "black" means.
Dividing the entry into noun and adjective is only useful for the
English-speaking user (it makes it possible to indicate the masculine gender
of the French noun). The indicator (= colour) is designed to inform the
English user that other senses of the noun black are not covered here. The
sub-entered capitalized form Black, with its special symbol and accompanying
synonymic indicator, is there to introduce the capitalized French translation
and to remind the English reader that "a Black (person)" is either
un Noir (if a man) or une Noire (if a woman). But for the French decoding
user most of this information is redundant, and the following presentation
(adopted in the Junior) is perfectly adequate:
black /blӕk/
noir.
Here is another example of how classic bilingual editing can over-egg the
pudding for decoding users:
eighteen /eiˈtiːn/ 1. adj dix-huit
inv 2. n dix-huit m inv 3. pron
dix-huit
In the Junior this becomes, with no loss of vital data:
eighteen /eiˈtiːn/ dix-huit
3. Translated examples in a learners' bilingual dictionary
The example sentence in a bilingual dictionary can (in
its most banal guise) exist simply to illustrate a given headword
translation; it can introduce important collocational information (we took
part in the show = on a participé au spectacle); or it can show a contextual
nuance for which a new translation is required. In "reference"
bilingual dictionaries, as in advanced learners' monolinguals, example
sentences help present an accurate "snapshot" of word behaviour,
and corpus tools provide examples that have the stamp of authenticity. Phrase
translations tread a careful line between naturalness and "generativity"
(ie, they must be idiomatic, yet sufficiently banal in stylistic terms to
enable the user to re-use them confidently).
In bilingual dictionaries designed for pre-intermediate
learners, the status of the example sentence is somewhat different. Examples
exist primarily not to provide a snapshot of headword behaviour, but as
pedagogical devices. Although natural and idiomatic, they are designed above
all to generate a translation that shows the headword equivalent in action.
The words they contain are carefully chosen to avoid complicating the issue
for the reader, and in most cases they are deliberately designed to make a
point. At mai/May, for instance, there is an example sentence that in most
reference bilingual dictionaries would be considered superfluous: Stéphanie
est née le trois mai / Stéphanie was born on the third of May.
This apparently banal example sentence in effect "teaches" three
important things. Its primary function is to show the use of the prepositions
on and of with month names. Secondly, it shows the capitalization of the
month name in English (compared to lower case in French). It also (though
more incidentally) takes the opportunity to show elle est née / she
was born, which many French native speakers have difficulty with.
Example sentences in the Junior are not drawn from corpora. The level of
language in our French lexical corpus is inappropriate (much of its content
consists of newspapers such as Le Monde, novels and magazines), and it was
important for editors to "fine-tune" their examples to maximize
their pedagogical value. Corpora provide an accurate and full picture of a
language; pre-intermediate learners need a more focused and simplified view.
The same is true of phrase translations: editors were encouraged to produce
translations that are grammatically well-formed, but to avoid
"over-idiomatic" language. At this level, the goal of language
learning is to produce intelligible, grammatical sentences, not to imitate
the idiosyncrasies of native speakers.
4. Asymmetry
The clear distinction between the functions of encoding and decoding,
language production and comprehension, tends to be blurred in the classic
bilingual text, which attempts to square the circle by providing information
for four user types at once (ie encoding and decoding users in each of the
two languages) in a text whose two sides more or less mirror each other. In a
learners' dictionary, where the emphasis is on production, the encoding and
decoding sides can (and should, ideally) be treated differently, with lots of
examples and guidance on the encoding side and a much more summary
presentation in the decoding section. In Junior Bilingue, as we have seen,
pages on the encoding side are divided into two parallel columns, with
headwords and examples on the left hand side and explicit annotations (in
French) on the right. The decoding side, on the other hand, is arranged like
a pared-down traditional bilingual text, trimmed of all information designed
for the "other" user (including systematic exemplification – there
are very few examples on this side). One immediately visible idiosyncrasy of
this dictionary is the fact that the line dividing the two sides is
off-centre, the encoding and decoding sides occupying two thirds and one
third of the book respectively, for an equivalent number of headwords.
5. Learner-centred tools
A key strategy when designing a bilingual dictionary for learners is to focus
on actual areas of difficulty. An excellent way to achieve this is to use a
"learner corpus", ie a corpus of texts written by non-native
speakers, complete with mistakes. Whether such a useful resource is available
or not (and it was not, for the Junior), bringing teachers on board from the
early stages of the project is another vital way of ensuring that the text is
as pertinent as possible. In a text presently being edited at Le Robert for
learners of English, for example, the entry for "dolphin" has what
might appear to be a superfluous and somewhat contrived example sentence,
"Flipper is the name of a dolphin in a TV show". Teachers told us
that many French pupils think that the English word for "un
dauphin" is "a flipper", because of the title of theTV series
Flipper, and the role of this example sentence is to alert the young reader
to this common misapprehension.
Reader competence and behaviour must always be taken into account by
dictionary writers, and the systematicity and rigour usually associated with
"good lexicography" need to be tempered by a degree of calculated
pragmatism. In traditional dictionaries, the entry for
"go" includes the verb "go" and the noun "go".
The reader who encounters the word "goes" is expected to know that
it is a form of either the noun or the verb, and to consult the relevant
section of the relevant entry (a kind of "auto-cross-referencing"
based on prior linguistic knowledge). But a true beginner may well look up
"goes", and the Junior includes "goes" as a headword. By
the same token, "funnier" and "funniest" are headwords as
well as "funny", and all irregular verb forms ("bought",
"been", "said") are also given headword status.
French native speaker teachers of English are very clear about the real
problems faced by a large proportion of their students. Lack of grammatical
knowledge in the students' own language and scant grasp of interlingual
issues (most notably the fact that word for word translation is a recipe for
disaster) lead to widespread misuse of standard dictionaries, with
catastrophic results in the classroom. For this reason, teachers are
understandably mistrustful of standard dictionaries as learning tools. The
explicit annotations in the Junior Bilingue, designed to clarify ambiguities
and explain grammatical points, make it a more appropriate companion for
young learners than the standard pocket bilinguals habitually lurking in
their bookbags.
6. Conclusion
To an extent, bilingual dictionaries (unlike native speaker dictionaries and
encyclopedias) are not factual: they provide guidance rather than ready-made
solutions, and it falls to the reader to use what they suggest appropriately.
This demands prior knowledge both of the scope of the dictionary (ie, just
how far can the information it provides be taken at face value) and of the
nature of translation itself. Pre-intermediate learners do not have this
knowledge, and the dictionary must take this into account. The Junior tries
to assume little or no prior knowledge, and says "Mind the step!"
when a known pitfall appears. Its content, structure and layout have been
designed to help its young reader acquire vocabulary in context. Like all
good bilingual dictionaries, its examples are its backbone. Like all good
learning tools, it knows where the real problems lie, and provides guidance
wherever it is needed.
K Dictionaries Ltd
10 Nahum Street, Tel Aviv 63503 Israel
tel: 972-3-5468102 • fax: 972-3-5468103
kd@kdictionaries.com
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