3. Collection of material

In the following sections, we shall discuss some points relevant to the lexicographer's work on a bilingual dictionary. These sections should in no case be read or understood in isolation, but only as complementing or modifying what has been stated in the respective discussions of the monolingual dictionary.

As far as the collection of material goes, the bilingual lexicographer is in an enviable situation if there is already a good, comprehensive, descriptive monolingual dictionary, preferably of the standard-descriptive type or an overall-descriptive one with a standard-descriptive nucleus at least of the non-native language of this pair of languages, but even more if there are such dictionaries of both of them. The absence of such a dictionary is always a serious handicap, because the lexicographer himself must then do much descriptive and other work which should in fact be done by the monolingual dictionary- This remark pertains not only to the collection of the material but has more general validity; in the absence of the monolingual dictionary, the lexicographer wilt have not only to decide for himself what are to be considered stabilized lexical units and what not, but he will also have to deal with the multiple meanings of each lexical unit, etc. All this will make his work considerably more difficult and longer.

As far as the collecting of material goes a good monolingual dictionary can be

used as the basis for the planned bilingual one. If there are more several monolingual

dictionaries at hand the one should be chosen which is most similar to the planned

bilingual dictionary: for example, a strictly modem standard-descriptive monolingual

dictionary is chosen if the planned dictionary is intended to cover only the

contemporary language; a more overall-descriptive, broader monolingual dictionary is

chosen if the planned dictionary is to be used for the comprehension of older texts,

etc. The material (i.e., the entry-words of the future bilingual dictionary, and their

multiple meaning found in the monolingual dictionary) is usually reduced, during the

selection, But on the other hand, even if there is an excellent monolingual dictionary

at the lexicographer's disposal, the material contained in it must not only be

70 compared with that of other eventual monolingual dictionaries, but it must be completed from other sources, too. In the first place, there may be a difference in the area covered by the two dictionaries: e.g. the monolingual is based more on literary texts whereas the bilingual one intends to be useful also for the generation or comprehension of administrative or technical, etc., texts; or the bilingual dictionary is intended to be useful also for reading some dialectal, or older texts not taken into consideration in the monolingual one. All these gaps must be filled by a specialized excerption of the respective texts. If there is some monolingual dictionary which can be used as the basis for the planned bilingual one, then it is usually older than the planned bilingual one, be the difference only a very short one. But two or three years suffice to make necessary a checking of the newest texts to see whether there are the new lexical units or new senses of the old ones; if so, a special excerption must close the gap again. Apart from all this and in any case, the bilingual lexicographer should excerpt the existing good literary translations of texts both from the source language into the target language, and vice versa. In the excerption for the monolingual dictionary these translations are frequently neglected as not being authentic enough; for the bilingual lexicographer, these translations have the special value that they show how the translator handles the culture-bound and other difficult words.

It is not necessary to stress that the whole material should be checked (coincidence of the evidence, of different dictionaries, of the excerption; the lexicographer's own knowledge; and that of the informants) in respect to its correct­ness and above all in respect to the question whether it is not obsolete.

If there is no monolingual dictionary at hand, the material for the bilingual dictionary must be gained in the same way as it is gained for the monolingual one. This is necessary for the source language irrespective of whether it is the lexicographer's native language or not, and for the target language if it is foreign to the lexicographer. Material collected for the target language should, however, be indexed and filed under the (provisional) entry-words of the source language.