Icelandic-French dictionary

A few challenges

Abstract

Lexia is a web-based dictionary between Icelandic and French where the source vocabulary was originally generated from the Icelandic-Scandinavian dictionary ISLEX. The work poses some different challenges for the editing of the target language than has been the case for ISLEX. This article is centred on three points in particular, that require special solutions to convey as clearly as possible the correspondence between Icelandic and French: collocations, middle voice of verbs and prepositions. We argue that an Icelandic-French dictionary cannot be modelled in every single detail from an Icelandic-Scandinavian one, as in some instances the representation of the Icelandic source language needs to take the French target language into consideration.