Assessing the effectiveness of bilingual dictionaries for translation with reference to Al-Mawrid English/Arabic dictionary

Al Mazrouei, SMSG

Abstract

The present study assesses Al-Mawrid dictionary from the perspective of the degree of its usefulness as a translational tool. It starts by reviewing available published studies on related subjects such as cognitive semantics, neologism lexicography and terminology compilation; and how useful Al-Mawrid is as a tool in the hands of professional translation practitioners.
The choice of Al-Mawrid as a subject of investigation stems from the fact that it is the most popular, the most sold and the most utilized tool in a market considered to be similar in size to that of Western Europe.
The study attempts to assess the degree of efficiency and adequacy of Al-Mawrid as a tool in a translational context and this assessment is carried out through an empirical investigation, which includes a 20,000 word-long corpus, randomly compiled and translated by randomly selected professional translators.
The study unveils a number of areas of weakness in Al-Mawrid based on the premise that it is a prominent translational tool and also when compared to other prominent dictionaries in other languages such as The
New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998). Furthermore, the analysis highlights areas in a number of Al-Mawrid’s entries that contain confusing and at times unclear explanations which were shown to be of little use to the translators in some contexts. The study also provides a number of suggestions which could be considered to produce a more up-to-date version of Al- Mawrid in order for it to be of a greater help to the translator/interpreter.

Citation

Al Mazrouei, S. Assessing the effectiveness of bilingual dictionaries for translation with reference to Al-Mawrid English/Arabic dictionary. (Thesis). University of Salford-Manchester

• Thesis Type: Thesis
• Deposit Date: Jun 28, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016