Aðgangur og efnisskipan í íslensk-erlendum orðabókum - vandi og valkostir

Abstract

Bilingual printed dictionaries have, in many respects, a fixed structure and traditíonal form of presentatíon, as the main role of such dictíonaries is usually to provide se- mantic equivalents to the entry words in another language. The fact that the common principle is to have mainly single-word headwords makes it somewhat problematíc to give access to phrases of various sorts and to cover them properly in the dictíonar- ies. A fixed structure where each entry word with its section is a separate and inde- pendent unit necessarily restricts the overview of the internal relations of the words and phrases contained within the dictionary.

Even if bilingual dictionaries are structured in such a way that word meanings take a central place, users are not able to actively approach the material from a se- mantic point of view. But by giving the material an electronic form, different kinds of access can be offered to users and they may thus have a variety of search options not formerly available to them. The combined contents of the dictionaries Orðastaður and Orðaheimur in electronic form comprises an independent Icelandic word base which can appeal to foreign users in many different ways and can i.a. give phrases far more weight than can be done in a printed dictionary. By carefully organising and analysing the material, ready access can be given to specific grammatical and semantic phenomena within the Icelandic vocabulary without necessarily having to specify words as search strings. Concept heads consritute a factor of classification, so instead of presuming that each Icelandic word and phrase has its equivalent in a foreign language, concept heads in different languages which correspond to the Icelandic concepts make it possible to group together semantically related words and phrases in the electronic dictionary