ISLEX - norræn margmála orðabók

Abstract

The Icelandic-Scandinavian dictionary ISLEX was opened on the web in November 2011. The outcome of the project is twofold. Firstly, a long awaited Icelandic-Scandinavian dictionary has been produced using the web-medium and its many possibilities. Secondly, the project has resulted in the compilation of a large amount of data on the Nordic languages, and provided important experience in jointly building such work in five countries simultaneously, as the Icelandic source language has been processed in Reykjavík and the target languages in Copenhagen, Bergen, Göteborg and Tórshavn, respectively. ISLEX has thus contributed to Nordic language collaboration.

The ISLEX-dictionary describes modern Icelandic, including a range of phrases, collocations and examples of use, all of which are translated into the five TLs, Danish, Norwegian (Bokmål og Nynorsk), Swedish and Faroese. ISLEX is thus a multi-lingual dictionary within which are contained five bilingual dictionaries. The electronic form offers direct search both in Icelandic and  the TLs and is therefore ideal for comparative studies between the languages. The project also offers other possibilities for research.  The material is a good base for various internordic projects within education and language technology.  Moreover, the whole Icelandic vocabulary is semantically classified, a classification which extends to the TLs too up to a point.