Ther Third ASIALEX International Congress, Tokyo

Shigeru Yamada

Shigeru Yamada studied lexicography at the graduate schools of Waseda University, Tokyo and the University of Exeter, UK. His interests include pedagogical and bilingual lexicography. He contributed as a lexicographer to Luminous Japanese-English Dictionary (2001) and Kenkyusha New English-Japanese Dictionary (6e, 2002). He is currently an associate professor of English at Waseda University, and the Asialex Treasurer.
shyamada@waseda.ac.jp

It is our great pleasure to host the Third ASIALEX International Congress in Japan this summer. Soon after Professor Minoru Murata was elected President at the Seoul conference two years ago, the organizing committee was set up. The 29 members have been working hard toward a successful conference under his leadership. Professor Murata retired from Chiba University at the end of March, but will be denied the promised luxury of free time until the end of the conference.

The conference takes place at Meikai University in Urayasu, located between Narita Airport and Tokyo, close to the site of Tokyo Disneyland. The Asialex Secretary, Yukio Tono, teaches at this university, and holds much responsibility for this event on his shoulders. There are expected to be no financial difficulties at all with Professor Murata on our side. He has never been in the red throughout his long career, in which he served as treasurer for many societies and conferences, including AILA 1999 Tokyo.

We are proud of the program of the conference – of its content, quality, and variety. There will be six symposiums, 60 papers and 13 poster presentations, as well as exhibitions by dictionary publishers and software companies. The conference will feature plenary lectures by Henri Béjoint, Adam Kilgarriff, Tokihisa Kurashima, Kosei Minamide, and Anne Pakir. In addition, we are glad that Reinhard Hartmann and Tom McArthur have agreed to join in the line-up with the following lectures: 

- Hartmann: Why lexicography needs a strong academic foundation
- McArthur: What on earth is English – a world, an international, or a global language?

The opening ceremony will include an award ceremony for the Kernerman Dictionary Research Grants, which was won by the project “A glossary of essential academic vocabulary” by Dr. Jacqueline Lam Kam-mei and her team, from Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. Prior to the conference, the Brighton intensive computer lexicography course will be offered by Adam Kilgarriff and Michael Rundell. This course is held at Senshu University, Tokyo, on 25-26 August, at a discount rate for the conference participants.

Asia is a vast area with diverse peoples, languages, and ancient traditions of dictionaries. Asialex should function as an institution and a forum that brings people together to discuss, study, and promote lexicography within and beyond Asia. To serve its purpose and people, the latest addition to the "lex" family must grow as an academic institution. Issues such as membership, fees, and the publication of a journal should be discussed in the business meeting at the conference.

All in all, this is going to be a busy and exciting week. Preparation is well underway, and we look forward to seeing many of you soon at Meikai.

The Third Biennial Conference of the Asian Association for Lexicography (ASIALEX) is entitled ‘Dictionaries and Language Learning: How can dictionaries help human and machine learning?’. It will be held at Meikai University, Urayasu, Chiba, Japan, 27-29 August 2003. For registration and details, please visit the cinference website: www.asialex.org.

The ASIALEX Landmarks

The Asian Association for Lexicography was established in March 1997, during the Dictionaries in Asia conference that was held at the Language Centre of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, at the initiation of Gregory James and Amy Chi.

The major objective of ASIALEX is to foster scholarly and professional activities in the field of lexicography in Asia.

Several papers from the inauguration conference were published under the title Lexicography in Asia (eds. McArthur T. and Kernerman I., Password Publishers, Tel Aviv, 1998).

The first Asialex international conference was held at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, Guangzhou, China, in 1999. It was organized by the first Asialex President, Professor Huang Jianhua, and had two major themes: ‘National experience in lexicography or dictionary compilation’, and ‘Bilingual lexicography’.

The second Asialex international conference was held at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea, in 2001. It was organized by the second Asialex Presdient, Professor Sangsup Lee, and had the major theme of ‘Asian Bilingualism and the Dictionary’.

The proceedings of each Asialex conference are available from its organizer.