* Korrespondenzadresse: Dr. Michael P ÄTZOLD , Akad. Oberrat, Universität Bielefeld, Fakultät für Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft, Postfach 10 01 31, 33501 B IELEFELD . E-Mail: michael.paetzold@uni-bielefeld.de Working areas: Modern English, English lexicography, Academic English. 1 I have used two corpora in particular for this article, the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA), both available on the Internet. Illustrative examples headed by a combination of letters and numbers are taken from BNC. 38 (2009) M ICHAEL P ÄTZOLD * Looking at an endangered species ? The latest family of bilingual English-German, German-English print dictionaries Abstract. This review article investigates the bilingual English and German print dictionaries published between 2001 and 2009. It has a long section on various aspects of the macrostructure but also considers the coverage of polysemous items, some verbal uses and other important contrastive aspects, such as raising and thematic roles. In a final chapter, some new developments will be discussed, including CD- ROM versions. […] there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient […]. From Dr Samuel Johnson’s Preface to his Dictionary (1755) 1. Introduction The gentle art of lexicography has come a long way since D R J OHNSON ’s time. Where he worked away almost single-handedly (helped by a great number of assistants who however only made long excerpts from the English writers of the 16 th to 18 th centuries and did not have a share in any of the more demanding tasks), we now have whole teams of experts on the various fields, styles and regions that can draw on impressively large electronic corpora, both English and German, thus obviating the need to copy things out laboriously by hand. 1 In bilingual lexicography, since the 1980s, the principle of the native-speaker has also made considerable headway: where once a single person would produce a bilingual dictionary (like W ILDHAGEN in his eponymous work, or B ETTERIDGE N i c h t t h e m a t i s c h e r T e i l 190 Michael Pätzold 2 The recent edition of 2009, 1406 pages, came out too late to be evaluated in all my tests, and will be referred to by [= OW2]. 38 (2009) in C ASSELL ’s dictionary) we now have English and German native speakers working together so that there is some hope that the various national and regional varieties will receive equal and equally adequate treatment. We will see to what extent this is the case when we look at the coverage of British and American English later in this article. While lexicographers are therefore in a much more enviable position these days, this does not apply to the same extent to their reviewers. To write a good review is a not totally dissimilar task to that of compiling a dictionary, not least because a whole life cannot be spent on ferreting out the (many) strengths and (hopefully few) weaknesses of published dictionaries. There are indeed far too many aspects to consider and every critic will make his or her own choice. I can only hope that my selection will be thought a reasonable one, ranging as it does from an extensive look at the dictionaries’ word lists, going on to a discussion of the depth of lexical entries with a focus on some uses of English intransitive verbs, and the coverage of the many meanings of one noun (rack) and one verb (meet). There is also a chapter on structures that present interesting contrasts between the two languages, for instance English verbs that are intransitive but have a passive meaning, or words that allow what is called the raised construction, or, finally, the different ways that the two languages realize so called thematic roles or semantic cases. The final chapter will take a brief look at some recent developments and the CD- ROM editions of some of the dictionaries. These are the print works reviewed in this essay, arranged in reverse chronological order, i.e. the most recent comes first: - Das große Oxford Wörterbuch für Schule und Beruf. Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch- Englisch. 1371 pp, Oxford 2003. [= OW]. 2 - PONS Großwörterbuch, Englisch-Deutsch, 1144 pp.; Deutsch-Englisch, 1019 pp, Stuttgart 2007. [= PO] Neubearbeitung der ersten Auflage: PONS Großwörterbuch für Experten und Universität. Barcelona [etc.] 2002. The CD-ROM version is called Elektronisches Großwörterbuch LexifacePro Englisch and includes a Visual Thesaurus. Stuttgart 2004. - PONS Wörterbuch Schule und Studium. Ernst Klett Sprachen, Stuttgart. Bd. 1: Englisch-Deutsch 2007; Bd. 2: Deutsch-Englisch 2006. [= PSS] - LangenscheidtCollins Großes Schulwörterbuch Deutsch-Englisch, 1440 pp. Englisch- Deutsch, 1406 pp, München 2006. [= LCG] - Via mundo Universalwörterbuch Englisch-Deutsch, 654 pp; Deutsch-Englisch, 584 pp, 2 nd edition, Gütersloh/ München 2005. [= BL] - DudenOxford Großwörterbuch Englisch. Mannheim. 3 rd edition. 2005. [= DO] - LangenscheidtCollins Großwörterbuch Englisch. Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch. 5 th edition, 2108 pp, Berlin [etc.] 2004. [= LC] CD-ROM edition 2004, under the title of Langenscheidt Collins e-Großwörterbuch Englisch. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 191 3 This dictionary is also available in a two-volume edition under the title of Langenscheidts Großes Schulwörterbuch. 38 (2009) - Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch Englisch. Teil 1: Englisch-Deutsch. Von Hellmut Willmann. 1325 pp., Berlin [etc.] 2001; Teil 2: Deutsch-Englisch Herausgegeben von der Langenscheidt-Redaktion. 1341 pp., Berlin [etc] 2004. [= LG] - Langenscheidts Handwörterbuch Englisch. Teil 1: Englisch-Deutsch. Von Heinz Messinger und der Langenscheidt-Redaktion. Teil 2: Deutsch-Englisch. Von Sonia Brough und der Langenscheidt-Redaktion. Berlin [etc.] 2001; about 1660 pp. [= LH] 3 2. Basic: Layout as/ and Semantic First Aid One of the basic challenges facing today’s dictionary publisher is how to present information in such a way that users can take it in easily, and that means above all visually. There are many aspects to the answer, ranging from the provision of a thumb-index to find the right letter in the alphabet (all test dictionaries have one) to a two-colour scheme (black and blue on white paper: this standard is not met by LG, LH and PO, which only employ different shades of black; PSS also uses a shade of gray to number its senses that I find difficult to see) and to a use of printing space that allows users to grasp immediately how a dictionary entry is structured, in other words what is where. The most user-friendly is LCG where syntactic and semantic differences are signalled through clear layout and brief glosses of the meaning looked for: in the case of a long entry like the German gehen, we are given its structure in a box at the beginning, then follow the various sections, in this case four, one each for the transitive, the intransitive, the reflexive and the impersonal uses, with each new verbal class beginning a new paragraph and the different meanings within the same syntactic class starting a new line. Clear layout is complemented by brief glosses that direct the user to the meaning she is looking for, e.g. in the entry for gehen we find such boxed explanations as “zu Fuß gehen” (= go, walk), “ertönen” (= ring, go) or “florieren” (which introduces such examples as “mein Geschäft geht gut…”). In addition, we are given typical collocates: for the “ertönen”-meaning for instance the nouns Klingel, Glocke, Telefon are listed. At the opposite end of user-friendliness is PSS, which gives no overview of its 4-column gehen-entry, which does not put the different syntactic uses into separate paragraphs or different meanings onto different lines. It does however also give brief glosses, e.g. “Ö KON laufen”. LH is a similar torture to write a dictionary review about - it also offers a gehen-entry in one monolithic block. LG is slightly better in that it devotes separate paragraphs to different syntactic classes, but not to different senses, which are however fairly easy to find thanks to the bold typeface it uses to number them. The rest of the test dictionaries are thankfully much more like LCG and therefore a pleasure to consult. The difference between the dictionaries lies in the way they solve the problem of the balance of two opposing demands - that of ease and clarity, i.e. user-friendliness, which presupposes a generous use of space, and the publicity-boosting demands for a big word 192 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) list. As we will see, PSS manages to accommodate a great number of words but for me the price to pay is too high. 3. Elementary: The Word List The first, and sometimes the only, question many people ask when they want to buy one is how many words are in it. An extensive wordlist is also the most important point in the advertising material distributed by publishers . In this third chapter I will try to fulfill this basic desire on the part of users and carry out four wordlist searches. First, I will count all the words in two sections of the English-German parts. Next I will look at specific vocabulary areas: recent words, items from different regions of the English-speaking world, and two especially topical areas, given the current global financial crisis and the Superwahljahr of 2009 in Germany - that of business and finance, and that of politics. 3.1 The big picture To satisfy the question of how many words, I have counted two sections in the English- German (parts of the) dictionaries, the first slice is from entrenched to equally, and the second from mediation to membership. Of the 276 items in the first slice LG has 216, PO and LH 145, LC 139, LCG 126 , PSS 108, DO 101, OW 64 and BL 61. There are one or two surprises in these bare figures: given their respective sizes, DO does rather badly and LCG rather better than is to be expected. The results for the second selection are similar: LG has 192 of a total of 232 items examined, followed by PO’s 114 and LH’s 113. LCG comes next with its 102 hits, then LC with 99 and DO with 98. The bottom three are this time round PSS (83), OW (69) and BL (49). Again, LCG does better than expected while DO comes up to expectations. In the following notes on the first slice, I give a few more details on the individual dictionaries. LG is good at the coverage of abbreviations (e.g. env.= envelope, E&O.E., e.o.m.eq.), terms from the earth and natural sciences (e.g. enzootic, enzymology, eobiont, eolith, eozoic, epact), other technical fields (epexegesis, eparch, eparchy, epode - all these are exclusive to it) while some other items are only found in LG and its sister dictionary LH (entresol, enucleate, epigastgrium, epigone, epithelium, epopee, epos). LG is also strong on compounds (ENT specialist, environment-saving, Epstein-Barr virus) and derivations, some of which are only found in it (e.g. enumerative, enviousness, epicist, Epicureanism, epistler, epitomizer), while others are again shared only with LH (e.g. epigrammatist, epigrammatize, epigraphic, equability, equalitarian). A final group of items is collocations: LG alone lists for example enumerated powers and these combinations with the adjective environmental: collapse/ law/ preservation/ psychology/ quality/ research/ science. While LG is far ahead in terms of its word list, there are nevertheless some items for Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 193 38 (2009) which one has to go to the other dictionaries, especially the runner-up in this test. PO lists exclusively entry duty/ tax, enumerated type, EOF, e-paper; epitaxial layer, epitaxy, EPO, e-procurement, equalization bank, equalizing item, and with environmental: accountingaction plan-depletion - management system - report - shares - tax), while it shares others with PSS (entryism, epinephrine, epistemologically). PO and LG alone offer entrepreneurial spirit , ENT specialist, episcope, and equalization payment. LH also has a number of exclusive entries (envier, ephedrine, epicentrum, epicurism). Other, non-LG items are contained in three or more of the dictionaries: entrylevel, entry qualifications, entry tax, entry test, E.number, epidemiological, epistemic, epistemological, epoxy, epoxy resin. Between them, the three top works (LG, LH and PO) cover almost all of the 276 items with the exception of enveloping, environmental movement, ephebe (only in LC); Environment Agency, environmental change/ concerns/ effects/ matters, Environment Service, episiotomy (LC and LCG); Environmental Health Department (LC, LCG, DO); environmental issues (LC, LCG, OW); Environmental Protection Agency (LC, LCG, BL, DO). Much the same remarks can be made about the second set of items. There are, however, two things that are perhaps worth mentioning. One is the treatment of adverbs. LH does not list regularly formed adverbs (there is no medically, meditatively or melodically) but is inconsistent in including forms like melodramatically. PO has a similar policy of saving space but does include melodically. The other point refers to the nature of some of the words and phrases selected. In PO for example lists items like medium-brown, megachurch, megamerger (also in PSS), megaretailer and megathick, to which may be added megafog in LH. I do not question that these are real English words, and megafog for one is a great favourite with wordgame players (anagram, crossword and Scrabble aficionados for instance, on whose websites the word figures prominently). No, what I wonder is whether these are nonce or established words, which latter status only would only really justify their inclusion. Of course, a lot of compound nouns and adjectives can be formed for a special occasion, but this does not mean that they should find a home in dictionaries (presumably to swell their word list). For example, medium blue and medium green and other colour words of this type can of course be found in internet searches and the prefix mega is perhaps even more productive than medium. The latest edition of the Concise Oxford Dictionary, for example, has these additional items, some of them technical (megafauna, megamouth shark, megapode, megatherium), and only one modern, colloquial term (megaflop). It wisely does not list additional informal items such as megaselling, or even more hyperbolically megabestselling author, or a mega-pop-star-diva who is mega-successful and can be seen at mega-million dollar-plus-fund raisers while mega-corporations might build megamalls or finance mega-movies (hopefully also mega hits) on mega-budgets that will play to mega-audiences (these last examples all come from CNN, The Economist and the BBC). In the case of megacombinations it might be sufficient in many cases to explain the meaning of the word and only include well established items. Lexicographers, in short, should exercise some judgment in the question of the inclusion-worthiness of lexical items. 194 Michael Pätzold 4 For the full titles of dictionaries and other works see the bibliography at the end of the article. 38 (2009) 3.2 Neologisms After having looked at the big picture, let us now take a few closer looks at selected areas of the vocabulary. As publishers make a great show of offering the very latest material, I have put together lists of English (30) and German (50) recent items to see how good the dictionaries really are in this respect. 3.2.1 English neologisms and their German translations Here is the list of 30 recent items, whose definitions or explanations are mostly taken or adapted from COD11 4 : adspend (money spent on advertising) ASBO (UK: antisocial behaviour order.) banner ad (online advertisement on a web page) beyond angry (more than angry) blog (intr. verb) (write a blog) blogger (one who writes blogs) bull bar (a strong metal grille fitted to the front of a motor vehicle to protect against impact damage) carbon footprint (amount of carbon dioxide you release into the atmosphere) carbon sink (natural environment viewed in terms of its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere) carbon trading (buying and selling the right to release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere) chill (out) (intr. verb) (calm down and relax) director’s cut (a version of a film that reflects the director's original intentions) golden ager (North American euphemistic an old person) golden hello (British informal a payment made by an employer to a keenly sought recruit) google (trans. verb) (informal search for information on the Internet) greenwash (noun) (disinformation published to present a green image to the public) rocket science, it’s not ~ (= not very difficult to understand) live videprinter (German (Live)Ticker) muffin top (layer of fat that protrudes over a pair of too-tight low-cut trousers) multi-tasking (of people: dealing with more than one task at the same time) mystery shopper (a person employed to visit a shop or restaurant incognito in order to assess the quality of the goods or services) photo gallery (German = Bildstrecke) post (noun) (an Internet posting) quad bike (motorcycle with four large tyres) satnav (abbreviation; navigation by satellite information) senior moment (occasion when one forgets something) sex up (trans. verb) (present something in a more interesting or lively way) text (verb) (send a text message ) toll plaza (US; a row of tollbooths on a toll road) water cooler (a dispenser of cooled drinking water) Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 195 5 The US examples of the past tense texted in COCA are also mostly of the intransitive use. 38 (2009) BL comes last with zero hits, followed by PSS with three, in sharp contrast to the surprisingly low scores of the much larger LH (3) and LG (4), which shows that neither of these works has been updated to include the more recent developments in the English language. LH includes a sizeable separate section on Internet language but the main body of the dictionary is clearly in need of a thorough revision. PO’s 8, LC’s 9 and even DO’s score of 13 hits are a disappointment and can hardly be regarded an adequate result for their sizes. The positive surprises come from OW2 with 13 and LCG with 16 hits. Two, admittedly rather obvious, insights suggest themselves: Size is no guarantee of up-to-date language material, and smaller dictionaries (can) do a better job on recent arrivals in the vocabulary. Again, I will make a few comments on coverage, forms and translations. The coverage of the three environmental items (carbon footprint, carbon sink and carbon trading) is almost non-existent: OW2 alone has one of them, carbon footprint. OW2 is also the only one to cover post and satnav, while greenwash is only found in LCG. None of the dictionaries has adspend, live videprinter and photo gallery (the latter two can be used for example on the BBC and Guardian websites), or the euphemistic golden ager and senior moment - clearly, the dictionaries have still a lot to do to catch up with the greying of the world’s societies. Finally, the expression beyond angry is also not listed in any of the dictionaries - a preposition-plus-adjective formation somewhat similar to German Schluss mit lustig. There are also some items that show whether dictionaries have kept up with the latest developments in form and translations. The verb chill out for example has lost its particle in colloquial language, which more recent form is contained only in PO, PSS, LCG, and DO. Another instance is the verb text: the most usual syntactic pattern today in both British and North American English seems to be the one heard e.g. on the BBC’s Radio 4, where the fixed expression is “you can/ please text us at ….”. 5 This fact is captured in OW2’s “text sb jdm eine SMS schicken, jdm simsen, jdm texten”. PO and PSS on the other hand use as their main pattern a less frequent one for their entries (“to text [sb] sth [jdm] eine SMS [-Nachricht] senden”, where “text sb [sth]” would correspond more closely to current frequencies). A final test of the dictionaries’ up-to-dateness comes in the translations of to text and to google. OW2 and DO alone offer the German simsen, while German googeln, like its English counterpart, can these days refer to an Internet search using any given search engine, not just Google (see the definition from COD11 above). This is reflected in PO and LCG (googeln) but LC still mentions Google and gives an explanation instead of a translation (im Internet mit der Suchmaschine Google ® nach Informationen suchen). DO does not thus restrict the reference of the verb, but its paraphrase, hardly translation, of the transitive use of the verb, like that in LC, dates it by its strangely circumlocutory way (das Internet nach Informationen über jdn durchsuchen). Finally, while smaller versions must of course cut down to size the parent dictionary’s word list, it is hard to see why PSS has decided to throw out this extremely frequent item. 196 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) 3.2.2 German neologisms and their translations The German list consists of two parts, the first section coming from my 1994 article in this journal (P ÄTZOLD 1994) and listing 18 items that were not covered by any dictionary then: abdrücken (Geld); abtörnen; Aromastoff; Bauchstraffung; regionales Fenster (TV); F&E-Aufwendungen; Fettabsaugen, ~ung; Herzkasper; oberschlau; Oberzentrum; Rückrundenspiel; Schwalbe (im Fußball); Siff; spitzenmäßig; Versorgungslücke (Rente); vollgedröhnt; Vorrundenspiel; Wichsvorlage The second part contains a selection of 32 mostly more recent items: abgefahren, das ist voll ~ ; abgleichen (Daten,Termine); aufarbeiten, etw ~; aufgestellt sein, gut~; Bild-, Fotostrecke; Bildbearbeitungsprogramm; Bio-Diesel; Boxenluder; Dritt, meine -en (Zähne); Einbürgerungstest; Einwanderungsland - ist die Bundesrepublik ein ~? ; Energie-Mix, den richtigen ~ finden; gewöhnungsbedürftig sein; grottenschlecht; Hartz IV-Empfänger(in); Integrationsbeauftragte(r); Klimaschutz ; Komasaufen; Kuschelkurs (auf ~ gehen); Mainhattan; Migrationshintergrund, mit~; Nachhaltigkeit; Nullrunde; Ökoladen; Ökopartei; Ökostrom; Pisastudie; raushängen: seine Verzweiflung nicht ~ lassen; satt (Hering/ Regen ~); Schätzchen, das ist ein altes ~; Sterbehilfe, aktive ~; Wissensgesellschaft The overall league table for my 50 recent German items sees PO at the top with 26 items, followed by LG (21) and LCG (18). Next come LC (16), OW2 (15) and DO (13) and PSS (12). LH (8) and BL (2) bring up the rear. I have split the items in this test into two groups in order to see to what extent the dictionaries of my earlier review have been revised: of the 18 items from the 1994 article, LG has 8, LCG 7, LC 6, DO 4 and LH 2. Five items (Bauchstraffung; regionales Fenster (TV); F&E-Aufwendungen, Oberzentrum; Rückrundenspiel) are still not covered by any of the dictionaries, including the newcomers (BL, OW2, PO and PSS). Of particular interest is perhaps the erratic coverage of football terms: Schwalbe is found in four dictionaries (LC, LCG, LH, OW2), but like the rest of them these dictionaries do not have Rückrundenspiel. In fact, quite a number of dictionaries have not even got an entry for Rückrunde (BL, DO, PO, PSS) and though OW2 has Rückrunde it does not list the meaning “second half of the season”. Vorrunde is served marginally better: all 9 dictionaries have an entry with the translation “preliminary/ qualifying round”, but the other meaning of “first part (of the season)” is found only in LC and LCG, while the test item Vorrundenspiel is covered only in LG and OW2. Do I need to point to the importance of football in modern societies in order to underline the need for lexicographers to do (more consistently) better in this respect? Further, I have looked more closely at the treatment of items from three areas: the environment; political, economic and social aspects, and colloquialisms, and this is how the figures break down: Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 197 38 (2009) PO PSS LCG BL LC LG DO OW2 LH % Environment (out of 7) 4 2 4 0 3 3 3 3 2 57/ 42 Political and social (out of 10) 2 1 2 0 2 2 3 3 1 30/ 20 Colloquialisms (out of 19) 12 5 8 1 4 7 9 5 3 63/ 47 The first figure in the percentage column states the value for the best dictionary, the second when the best and worst results are not taken into consideration. The figures, as they say, speak volumes: social aspects in the widest sense need to be included to a far greater extent than is the case today, and the other two results are also nothing to write home about. Here are some details: of the environmental items, Energie-Mix is not found at all, while Bio-Diesel figures only in two, Ökostrom in three, and even Klimaschutz is taken into account in only four dictionaries. Among the second group of items, these are the ones that are not listed: Einbürgerungstest, F&E-Aufwendungen, Hartz IV-Empfänger, Integrationsbeauftragte(r) and Wissensgesellschaft. OW2 is the only one to have an entry for Migrationshintergrund, and that with a good illustrative example: “ein Programm zur Förderung von Kindern und Jugendlichen mit Migrationshintergrund a scheme to improve the chances of children and young people from immigrant communities”. Colloquial items are served somewhat better than the other groups. Here only three items are not covered by any dictionary (Kuschelkurs, Schätzchen, meine Dritten), three words (abdrücken, Mainhattan, vollgedröhnt) by a single one while five (abgefahren, abtörnen, Boxenluder, Komasaufen, Wichsvorlage ) are covered by only two. 3.3 Regional Varieties …he added that we were all going to eat some genuine, American brownies, to mark the ‘debut’, ugh, ‘of a genuine, American girl.’ Quite apart from the toe-curling sentimentality of all this, to most of us in those days ‘Brownies’ meant young Girl Guides, just as ‘Cubs’ meant young Boy Scouts, so there was a certain amount of hilarity released by the announcement that we were going to eat some…[F EL - LOWES , 333] In this section on the word lists of the dictionaries under review, I will look at their coverage of national and/ or regional items. This will involve a discussion of how they deal with US American words and phrases as well as with some lexical items from other English-speaking countries. 3.3.1 US American English I will first test the coverage of US American English. Though few US items will cause merriment in Britain - the one in the quotation above is a rare example; another was in the Midwest in 1993, when I asked a petrol station attendant whether they had an airline, meaning “A pipe or tube conveying (compressed) air” (SOED, s.v. airline) - it is obviously important for dictionaries to cover these major varieties. 198 Michael Pätzold 6 See for instance the journal World Englishes, published by Blackwell Publishing (M C A RTHUR 1998 and C RYSTAL 2004. 521), where you find this heading: “20.2 New online Englishes”. 7 See for instance Collins English Dictionary, which has from its beginnings in 1979 employed a number of special consultants on British English as well as national varieties around the world. 8 I have run checks on many of the items in the above list in both BNC and COCA. These are the items for which there are a number of examples in COCA but none in BNC (numbers in brackets refer to the number of occurrences in COCA): bias crime (11); class president (146); copacetic (35); fry pan (27); home room (24); letter carrier (68); traffic circle (60); weatherize(d) (9). 9 Some more examples: authored was found 789 times in COCA, and 19 times in BNC; bathrobe has 813 examples in COCA and 40 in BNC; in the future is listed 10775 times in COCA and 2560 in BNC; for humungous there are 15 occurrences in COCA and 3 in BNC; partway has 317 listings in COCA as contrasted with 6 in BNC; in school (the institution) COCA 8847, BNC 854; Scotch tape COCA 90 vs. BNC’s 7 examples. 10 This is true of LCG and PSS. To raise their students’ interest, teachers may find useful lists of words that show differences in various national editions of the Harry Potter novels, e.g. http: / / www.popogo.com/ hol/ words/ wordgallery1.htm or http: / / www.anu.edu.au/ andc/ pubs/ ozwords/ June2002/ Potter.html. 38 (2009) Economic and political globalisation has been preceded by a linguistic one, witness the way scholars now talk about “Englishes” 6 rather than “English” - a usage that has however not yet been adopted by bilingual dictionaries (indeed, PO and PSS put “no pl” at the beginning of the relevant sense unit in their English-German part). Monolingual native-speaker dictionaries have blazed the trail in this respect 7 and have been followed by learner dictionaries, e.g. OALD7, which includes in its most recent, seventh edition about 750 items from e.g. Australia, India, Ireland, Scotland and South Africa. So, it would seem to be high time for bilinguals to follow suit. First, though, let us look at how good US American items are covered. It should be understood that agreement is unlikely to be reached on what items are mainly or exclusively US American English and what items have achieved wider currency. Take for instance the phrase out of sight! Recently, a British scholar who makes his home in the United States was invited to give the BBC’s prestigious Reith Lectures in 2008. This was his reaction: Professor Spence said: “It had never occurred to me that I might be asked to give the Reith Lectures. Now that I have been asked, and for the sixtieth anniversary lecture no less, all I can think of is the American stock phrase ‘Out of sight! ’.” Now, RHUD which is compiled and published in the US, labels the expression as slang, the latest edition of the British Concise Oxford Dictionary (COD11) calls it informal but neither gives any indication that it is restricted to American English. Even if no example of a word or construction is found in BNC (the British National Corpus) this cannot be regarded as proof that an item is only found in American English. 8 Having said this, my list consists of items that clearly show a greater use in COCA (The Corpus of Contemporary American English) than in BNC. 9 In these cases, therefore, it would seem justified to indicate this fact by a comment like mainly or especially US or similar labels. I would also like to mention that, in addition to their alphabetic word list, some works offer separate lists. 10 My first test is of 30 English items, the second test will revert the direction and take a Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 199 11 See the Wikipedia article on Ranch dressing. 38 (2009) look at the translations of 20 German items taken with one exception from the 30 original English items. English-German Test: In the English-German test, the smallest dictionary, BL, has 11 items correctly listed and translated and LCG 13; the considerably larger works of DO and LH achieve a score of 12, and LC of 14, all rather low results for their size. It seems fair to say that not enough attention has been paid to American English in these works. This is distinctly different in OW2 (19) and even more so in PSS (21), which do better than their size would warrant. The two largest works show expected results: 19 (LG) and 21 (PO) hits. Items covered by all dictionaries are bathrobe, obligate, someplace, traffic circle and Scotch tape. Only two items are in seven (review, on weekends) while six items are in six works (beet, cart, letter carrier, outside of, partway). Three items are covered by one work (copacetic, homeroom; and bias crime; LCG however lists bias attack and bias incident so that users could perhaps guess the meaning of the item looked for). Ranch is the only item not mentioned by any of the dictionaries, although no traveller to the US since the late 1980s 11 can have avoided hearing it many times when asked for which dressing they want on their salads (the other three being French, Italian and Thousand Islands). A final note on a half hour: BL, PO, PSS do not list this s.v. half but give it a separate entry s.v. half-hour without labelling it as US usage, and the two PONS works also restrict it to the prepositional phrase in a half-hour. Next, the question of labels. The two groups of items mentioned in footnotes 8 and 9 would seem to justify some sort of label. For the first group - that with zero examples in BNC - all dictionaries that list the relevant item employ an appropriate national label, with the exception only of LG, which does not mark weatherize. In my next group, where according to COCA and BNC there are many more examples in US American English than in British English, there is a greater difference between dictionaries. In the case of bathrobe, in the sense of German Morgenmantel, LG and OW2 use an American label, while DO, PO, PSS have none; in the future gets a label only in PO, PSS; for humungous/ humongous only OW2 has a regional label, while LC, LCG, PO and PSS only mark it as colloquial. Partway (with a ratio of 317: 6) gets no label in any dictionary while in school is marked as American only in LG and OW2 but not in DO, PO and PSS. Scotch tape is labelled as American in all dictionaries except LH. LC is strange in its entry for likely: although it gives a good example “they’ll likely be late (dial)” it uses the label dial without mentioning the American national variety. On the whole then the labelling practice of dictionaries in this respect can be regarded as reliable only with regard to very clear cases. Some translations also deserve mention. LH is clearly out of date as it gives a paraphrase for Scotch tape “(durchsichtiges) Klebeband, (durchsichtiger) Klebestreifen” but not the German equivalent Tesafilm, as do the other dictionaries. LG offers only “(Verkehrs)Kreisel” instead of “Kreisverkehr”. Finally, dictionaries 200 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) give contradictory classifications for the verb review: LG has it as an intransitive, and LC as a transitive verb only. Here is an example from COCA, in which the verb is used transitively, which is also the classification used in RHUD: You know, all the things they told us in college, that if you read your lessons and then went to class and paid attention and took copious notes and reviewed them, the exam would be easy. German-English Test: The results of the English-German parts, then, show two dictionary groups, the lower translating between 11 and 14 items and the higher between 19 and 21. These figures are considerably better than the ones for the German-English sides. The findings here are: out of 20 test items LG has 11 translations with the looked for US items, followed by LC, LH and OW2 with six, DO and LCG with 5, BL with three, and PO and PSS - remember, these were the two top-scoring dictionaries in the US English-German tests with 22 hits out of 30 - with a mere two. In other words, what was the lowest score in the English- German test is the highest in the German-US English. In fairness I should add that some of the dictionaries offer correct US translations other than the ones looked for: LC, LCG and LH have mailman to render Briefträger; OW2 gives convenience store for Tante-Emma-Laden, which is acceptable with regard to the restricted range of goods on offer, but does not capture the colloquial flavour or other connotations of mom-and-pop store; and a number of dictionaries have public transportation for German öffentliches Verkehrsmittel. Even so, the difference between the coverage of US items in the English-German and German-English parts is striking and the lesson is clear: when translating into English, lexicographers must pay substantially greater attention to US English equivalents. Apart from this general observation, there is also a remarkable unity in the items covered: all dictionaries have correct translations for German Einkaufswagen and Tesafilm, while none cover outside of (= ausserhalb), fry pan (= Bratpfanne), hike (= Erhöhung), home room (= Klassenzimmer), partway (= teilweise), public transit (= öffentliche Verkehrsmittel), likely (for wahrscheinlich, as in he’ll likely come) or weatherize (= wetterfest machen). 3.3.2 Items of Yiddish origin In this sub-section I want to look at a group of Yiddish words that first found their way into American English and are now being accepted into many more varieties the world over. The COD11 labels them with one or two exceptions as informal and (chiefly) North American. This is the list of 15 items with brief explanations from COD11 of their meanings: Schlemiel (stupid, unlucky person) Schlep vi (move with effort) Schlock (trash) Schlub (talentless, boorish person) Schlump (slow, slovenly, inept person) Schmaltz (excessive sentimentality); no label Schmear (a bit of butter or cheese on bread) Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 201 12 I would like to thank Sally Wehmeier of the Oxford University Press for sending me the OALD7 items. 13 The definitions, sometimes in shortened form, are taken from OALD7. These are the meanings of the abbreviations used: AustralE = Australian English; CanE = Canadian English; EafrE = East African English; IndE = Indian English; IrishE = Irish English; NAmE = North American English; NZE = New Zealand English; SAfrE = South African English; ScotE = Scottish English. 38 (2009) Schmear (underhand inducement) Schmo (foolish, inept person) Schmooze (talk,chat [at function] to gain advantage) Schmuck (foolish, contemptible person) Schmutter (clothing; rubbish); no label Schnook (fool) Schnorrer (beggar, scrounger) Schnozz (nose; apparently from German Schnauze) Some of the items are well covered (schmaltz is found in all dictionaries, schlep and schmuck in all except one (schlep is not in DO; schmuck not in LH; also, LG’s translation of schmuck as “Fiesling, gemeiner Kerl” is unlikely to be correct). Unsurprisingly, the more recent dictionaries (PO, PSS, LCG - all show nine hits) do well; LC and OW2 muster six correct entries each, while the larger LG offers no more than seven. As one would expect, the smallest, BL, does not do particularly well (three entries) but the considerably larger LH and DO do not do much better - four hits - for which other reasons have clearly to be found. 3.3.3 World English In an age of political and economic globalisation, it is no longer adequate to concentrate on the English of the United Kingdom and the United States. Monolingual dictionaries for the native speaker have long included words and phrases from all over the Englishspeaking world. But recently even a learner dictionary (OALD7) has included 750 items from South African to Canadian English. I have chosen from its materials 12 a list of 20 items for this review that ranges from pragmatic (kia ora; slainte) to informal expressions (dinkum, smoodge, stickybeak, U-ey, wog) to currency (lakh, loonie), educational (matric exemption) and politcal terms (Métis). Word List (World English) 13 dinkum real or genuine (NZE, AustralE inf) fossick search through something (AustralE, NZE, inf) four-way stop a place where two roads cross each other at which there are signs indicating that vehicles must stop before continuing (NAmE, SAfrE) khanga light cloth worn by women (EAfrE) kia ora a greeting wishing good health (NZE) lakh a hundred thousand (IndE) loonie the Canadian dollar or a Canadian one-dollar coin (CanE) matric exemption the fact of successfully completing the final year of school and being able to study at university or college (SAfrE) Métis (especially in Canada) a person with one Aboriginal parent and one European 202 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) parent, or a person whose family comes from both Aboriginal and European backgrounds naartjie small orange (SAfrE) ngoma a celebration (EAfrE) outwith outside of sth; not within sth (ScotE) slainte a word that people say to each other as they lift up their glasses to drink (IrishE, ScotE) smoodge to behave in a friendly way towards sb because you want them to give you sth or do sth for you (AustralE, NZE, informal) spruit a stream after heavy rains (SAfrE) stickybeak a person who tries to find out information about other people’s private lives in a way that is annoying or rude (AustralE, NZE, informal) U-ey U-turn (informal, esp AustralE) visible minority a group whose members are clearly different in race from those of the majority race in a society (CanE) walkabout a journey (originally on foot) that is made by an Australian Aboriginal in order to live in the traditional manner (AustralE) wog an illness, usually one that is not very serious (AustralE, informal) Two dictionaries do not contain any item (LH, OW), BL only has four-way stop , LC and LCG list two (dinkum, four-way stop) while only PO, PSS and LG offer four. DO has three hits but two of them with doubtful translations: dinkum (= real, genuine) is rendered as “astrein“ and Australian walkabout is not just any old “Buschwanderung” (let alone LG’s “Wanderung”). Similar criticisms apply to LG’s “reell” for dinkum as well as its orthography (métis - that is with a small m) and its explanation of Métis (= a person of mixed Aboriginal and European descent [CanOD, s.v. Métis]) by “(französisch-indianischer Mischling)”. PO and PSS, though they give the orthography usual in Canadian English, offer LG’s too narrow explanation as translation: “Mischling französischer und indianischer Abstammung”. 3.4 Finance and Business I now come to the first of my tests of items that are of particular importance at the time of writing. The English-German list of terms from business and finance consists of 30 items that are regularly found in the relevant (sections of) journals and newspapers, for which I give brief examples, translations or explanations before discussing the test results. English-German Test ARM = adjustable rate mortgage bailout = financial rescue, as in Congress approved the $700m ~ BRIC the ~ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) business confidence index = German Geschäftsklimaindex core inflation see below headline inflation credit crunch For “deserving” homeowners caught out by the ~, Mr McCain offers a lifeline. If…you were creditworthy when you took out the loan but unable to service it now because it reset to a higher rate, he would let you switch to a cheaper loan guaranteed by the government. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 203 38 (2009) defaults [= non-payment] on subprime mortgages deficit spending = government spending in excess of revenue dotcom as modifier, e.g. in ~ boom, bubble, bust emerging economies Emerging economies risk repeating the same mistakes that the developed world made in the inflationary 1970s export-driven In the past, Japanese firms have been export-driven; in future they will be less likely to export their way out of trouble exposure … conditions in the subprime market were worsening, and the bank decided to cut back on its exposures…Credit Suisse's proprietary risk model… signalled a problem with…its portfolio of leveraged loans. It duly started hedging its exposure to these assets as well. (The Economist, 15 May 08) financial instrument There is a simple relationship between the price of a ~ and its yield, i.e. the financial return from holding it. Financial Services = regulator of all providers of financial services in the UK; = German Authority BaFin financial vehicle = financial instrument fiscal stimulus (package) Congress passed its fiscal stimulus package in February, promising most Americans $600 plus $300 more for each child in income-tax rebates - and a hoped-for hefty economic boost along with it. (The Economist, 30 May 2008) headline inflation is a measure of the total inflation within an economy.This differs from core inflation (German harmonisierter Verbraucherpreisindex, or HVPI), which excludes such things as food and energy costs. hedge fund is a non-traditional investment fund that is (or rather was) supposed to be safe from risk interbank market In the ~ the prices banks pay to borrow money from each other are still near record highs. junk debt the amount of corporate ~ on the balance sheets of ten of the largest banks in the loan markets had fallen by $205 billion…the banks are so desperate to get these loans off their books that they provide financing…at low interest rates (The Economist, 29 August 2008) lender of last resort Some congressmen want the government to buy up securities backed by student debt, and the federal education department may step in as a ~ (= when all else has failed; The Economist, 17 April 2008) leveraged buy-out (German fremdfinanzierte Übernahme) credit line / line of credit = credit given by a bank to a certain amount, or the amount itself ROI = return on investment sovereign wealth fund = state-owned investment fund spike the ~ in food and fuel prices in the past year (= abrupt rise or increase) structured investment = type of fund in the shadow banking system vehicle (SIV) subprime mortgage = a mortgage to a borrower who is not qualified for other loans [for example because of their poor credit history] supply chain = a system to get products and services from supplier to customer tiger economy = fast-growing economy This English test contains a number of recent and up-to-the-minute items (bail-out; the BRIC countries; dotcom as adjective; Financial Services Authority; fiscal stimulus [package]; junk debt; sovereign wealth fund; subprime mortgage, and tiger economies), so the 204 Michael Pätzold 14 Klett publishers have brought out PBWB, a specialist bilingual business dictionary, which is perhaps the reason why the green dictionaries are so clearly ahead of the rest. 38 (2009) test is an additional way to find out how up-to-date the dictionaries really are. Here are the results: seven of these nine items are not listed in any, while dotcom as adjective is listed in two (PO, PSS) and tiger economies in three (LCG, LC, DO) dictionaries, a sobering result that should give dictionary publishers food for thought. The same goes for the overall statistics: the two PONS works 14 have a clear overall lead (PO with 13, PSS with 8 hits), three dictionaries manage five (DO, LCG, LG), one four (LC) and OW2 and LH a bare two correct results while BL has only one of the 30 test items. Finally, while core and headline inflation may be too technical for inclusion in generalpurpose dictionaries, this explanation cannot be advanced for export-driven (only in PO), which is perhaps the most common adjective used to characterize the German economy. German-English Test The German-English test of economics and finance items consists of 10 collocations and 20 other items: Börsenkurs - einbrechen; Eigenkapital - aufstocken; Handel, aus dem ~ gehen; Insolvenz - anmelden; Investitionsanreize - schaffen ; Konjunktur - stützen; Konjunkturprogramm - auflegen; Kredit - abzahlen; Staatsdefizit - abbauen: Umsatz - steigen Absatzverband; Abschreibung; Abschwung; Aufschwung; Auftragslage; deckeln; Geschäftsklimaindex; Geschäftssinn; Industrieland; Investorengruppe: ; Schwellenland; Stabilitäts(- und Wachstums)pakt; Stützungskauf; Umsatzeinbruch; Verdrängungswettbewerb; Wachstumsmotor; Wertpapier; Wirtschaftsflaute; Wirtschaftskauffrau/ ~mann The results show three dictionaries with 12 hits in front (DO, LG and PO), followed by two with 11 translations (LCG, LH) and one with 10 (LC). At the bottom of the league table are PSS (8), OW2 (7) and BL (3). Again, taking into account the ratio between size and results, LCG does better than is to be expected. The overall result is not impressive, to put it mildly, especially as there are few if any highly technical coinages in the test corpus: the simple fact is that these general bilingual works do not pay enough attention to this eminently important area. While the ratio between nouns (8: Absatzverband; Abschreibung; Geschäftsklimaindex; Investorengruppe; Konjunkturpaket; Wachstumsmotor; Wirtschaftsflaute; Wirtschaftskauffrau/ ~mann) and collocations (4: Handel, aus dem ~ gehen; Konjunktur: stützen; Konjunkturprogramm: auflegen; Staatsdefizit: abbauen) not listed in any of the dictionaries (that is, in their relevant senses) is identical, it is noticeable that the German-English collocations are rather worse served than the simple and compound nouns, as is shown in this table: Type of item PO PSS LCG BL DO LC LG OW2 LH 10 Collocations 2 1 2 0 3 2 3 3 2 20 other terms 10 7 9 3 9 8 9 4 8 Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 205 15 Order books can be big, bulging, fat(tened), full(er) or thin(ner), thinning. Compare this example from the International Herald Tribune: “Everyone is talking about the second half of 2002 for a recovery in the U.S., with Europe following. But if you're asking me, ‘Do you have evidence? ’ I’d have to say that there is no evidence yet from our order books.” The last sentence would be something like Das gibt die Auftragslage nicht her in German. 38 (2009) Some brief notes on individual items follow. Abschreibung is variously rendered as depreciation or writing-off, but write-offs for Abschreibungen (vornehmen) is not found in any of the test dictionaries. While many dictionaries include translations of Industriekaufmann (not in the test), none offer the English for Wirtschaftskaufmann/ ~frau. A similar asymmetry is found when one compares the two items Aufand Abschwung. While an English translation for Aufschwung (usually upswing or upturn) is listed in all dictionaries in this test, those for Abschwung are found in seven dictionaries, with only four (LG, LH, PO, PSS) giving the analogous translation downswing while the others offer recession or downward trend. Another difference between translation equivalents and explanations or paraphrases would seem to be found in the English renderings of Industrieand Schwellenland: industrial(ized) country is the unanimous favourite for the first term, but the translations for the second, euphemistic term differ widely. The most recent terms for Schwellenland appear to be newly industrialized country (LG) or industrializing nation (PO), with LG adding the abbreviation NIC for good measure. Other lexicographical offerings like emerging nation or threshold country may be less frequent today and fast-developing nation (LC, LCG; PSS adds the gloss “a developing nation which is on the way to becoming a developed nation”) or DO’s “country at the stage of economic take-off” look like explanations rather than translations - in other words, these last dictionaries have not brought their English translations up-to-date. PO plays it safe by offering three versions (threshold country, emerging nation, newly industrializing nation), without however indicating that they differ in terms of time, as is often the case with euphemisms. The English translations of Auftragslage range from order situation (LC, LCG, PO, PSS), orders situation (LG, LH), order position or picture (PO) to more elaborate paraphrases or explanations like situation as regards orders (DO), situation concerning orders (LC, LCG, PSS) while order volume or order pipeline are not mentioned at all. LG and LH however offer an example which presents an idiomatic expression: “die Auftragslage ist gut the order books are well filled”. This compound noun, both in the singular and the plural, is very common in English and I suspect that it would often be used in a context where German employs Auftragslage. 15 3.5 Politics As this is a Superwahljahr in Germany when a number of elections will be held, my second topical test concerns the field of politics. The overall results are these: 206 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) Test PO PSS LCG BL DO LC LG OW2 LH Engl-Germ. (20 items) 12 11 14 8 14 14 9 11 4 Germ.-Engl. (30 items) 14 12 16 3 15 18 22 7 11 Total (out of 50) 26 23 30 11 29 32 31 18 15 What emerges again is that LH is disproportionately weak (it does not for example include the English items deposit, exit poll, hung parliament, safe/ marginal seat or spoilt ballot, nor the German Elefantenrunde, Hammelsprung, Länderkammer, Umfragewerte or Wahlsonntag), and LCG comparatively strong, in their coverage of this lexical area. OW2 is also seen as not sufficient, not to mention small BL, but these two are small dictionaries that cannot be expected to do much better. English-German test Here is the list of 20 items from a BBC website posted for the 2005 General Election with explanations of the more difficult terms (also mostly taken from that website): Absentee ballot Battlebus = A vehicle used by a party to transport its leader or other senior figures around the country to rallies or to meet the people Canvassing = During a campaign, active supporters of a party ask voters who they will vote for and try to drum up support for their own candidates. Deposit = £500 paid by candidates or their parties to be allowed to stand. It is returned if the candidate wins 5% or more of the votes cast. Electoral register = A list of all those in a constituency entitled to vote Exit poll = A poll asking people how they have voted just after they have left the polling station. Hung parliament = If after an election no party has an overall majority, then parliament is said to be ‘hung’. The main parties will then try to form a coalition with one or more of the minor parties Marginal constituency/ seat Notional result = After major boundary changes like that in 1997, the main broadcasters agree how altered constituencies were likely to have voted in the previous election. This gives them a base against which to compare the new results. Party Election Broadcast (PEB) = Broadcasts made by the parties and transmitted on TV or radio. By agreement with the broadcasters, each party is allowed a certain number according to its election strength and number of candidates fielded Polling day Prorogation = The act of ending a session of Parliament. Performed when an election is called Proxy vote = People unable to get to a polling station are allowed to appoint someone to vote on their behalf if they apply in advance. They are also allowed a postal vote Safe seat Spin doctor = Person employed to place a favourable interpretation on an event so that people or the media will interpret it in that way. Spoiled/ spoilt ballots = Ballot papers which have been filled in incorrectly. The returning officer Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 207 38 (2009) has the final say over whether any paper not marked with a single cross is valid Swing n = The transfer of votes from one party to another. The actual transfer is complicated, so usually taken to mean between the top two parties in any seat or area. Target seat = In theory, any seat that a party contests and held by a rival is one of its targets. In practice, a target seat is one that a party believes it can win and puts a lot of effort into doing so. West Lothian Question = Shorthand term coined to describe a question posed by Tam Dalyell, once Labour MP for West Lothian. Mr Dalyell asks how it is right that postdevolution, Scottish MPs can vote at Westminster on matters solely to do with England, while English MPs do not have the same influence on that issue in Scotland, as it has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament. Writ of election = Once Parliament has been dissolved, a writ of election is issued for each constituency formally announcing the poll. There are a few technical terms not found in the test dictionaries and which they cannot in fairness be expected to cover, such as notional result and target seat. Things are a little different with the West Lothian Question, which is political dynamite for the relations between Scotland and England. But more familiar terms like canvassing also pose problems for the translator as this form of campaign activity is unknown in Germany. It would seem that a paraphrase like Umfrage und Wahlwerbung would come fairly close to the meaning of the English term. Acceptable equivalents in the dictionaries are Wahlwerbung (DO, LC, LCG, PO), Stimmenwerbung (BL, LG) while Wahlpropaganda (LH) does not really render the semantic content of the English word. Another difficult term is swing, which can be elegantly rendered as (Links-, Rechts)Ruck in appropriate contexts but needs a different translation on its own. Most works offer Umschwung but none presents Wählerwanderung, a commonly used term in German TV election coverage, which only DO comes near with Abwanderung. Battlebus, though not listed by any dictionary, does have Wahlkampfbus as a general, and Guidomobil as a specific equivalent - this was a VW bus used by the FDP politician Guido Westerwelle in 2002. Finally, how to render spin doctor - either a paraphrase (such as BL’s Pressebeauftragter [perhaps better Medienberater] eines Politikers oder einer Partei, der Informationen an die Öffentlichkeit weitergibt, die die jeweiligen Handlungen in ein positives Licht rücken) or loan words like Spin doctor (PSS; the orthography makes this rather unlikely), Spin Doctor (PO) or the more Germanlooking Spin-Doktor (DO), the last two forms found also in the German Wikipedia article on the word, while Spindoktor is not found in any of the test dictionaries though increasingly used in newspapers. At present, if one was to go for one of the last three solutions, it would look like a good idea to include a brief paraphrase to make sure users understand what spin doctors are about (this is done by PO, PSS). German-English Test Ten collocations: Bundestag: zusammentreten; Koalition: eingehen; Liste: auf der ~ abgesichert sein; Neuwahlen: vorgezogene ~ ausschreiben; Ochsentour: machen; “Parteien zur Wahl”; Regierung: umbilden; Stimmen: auf sich vereinen/ vereinigen; Stimmen: entfallen auf ; Stimmenfang: auf ~ sein/ gehen Twenty other items: Altbundeskanzler; Ältestenrat; Elefantenrunde; Hammelsprung; Jamaika(koalition); 208 Michael Pätzold 16 The term Ampelkoalition is served much better: though not listed in OW2 or LH, it is found in the other dictionaries, with PO, PSS and DO giving good explanations for the (English) user. 38 (2009) Kampfabstimmung; Kanzlerkandidat; Länderkammer; Landesliste; Landeswahlleiter; Legislaturperiode; Ministerpräsident; Ökopartei; Spitzenkandidat; Superwahljahr; Überhangmandat; Umfragewerte; Unentschiedener; Wahlmüdigkeit; Wahlsonntag Not covered by any dictionary are Jamaika(Koalition) 16 , or Wahlmüdigkeit. Superwahljahr is listed only in the largest dictionary (LG: year with multiple elections). Among collocations Parteien zur Wahl (Party Election Broadcast or PEB) is not listed while the entries for Unentschiedener list the adjectives undecided or indecisive but do not give don’t-know, the term used in opinion polls. The dictionaries have surprising difficulties with the items that deal with the state level in German politics. Only DO and LG list Länderkammer, with DO translating “second/ upper chamber (composed of representatives of the member states of a federation)” and LG giving “second chamber comprising representatives of the Länder”. DO’s version does not mention Germany specifically and LG uses Länder instead of the established states. LG uses Land again in its explanation of Landesliste, while all other dictionaries use region or regional in theirs, with the one exception of LH, which offers state ticket, a term commonly used only in the USA. Finally, PO plays it amusingly safe in its translation of Landeswahlleiter (regional state election returning officer), where regional is superfluous. No idiomatic equivalent is found for Ochsentour machen in the test works although there is climb (up) the greasy pole, as in “The good Soviet operator was a dedicated bureaucrat who could climb the greasy pole of Party advancement skilfully enough to beat his fellow tigers” [Washington Post 1999 - from COCA, s.v. greasy pole]). Idiomatic renderings are similarly missing for two other items, Umfragewerte and Legislaturperiode. For the former, LC, LCG both give opinion poll results, which conveys the meaning all right but is less idiomatic than these examples from BNC: A66 692 There were widespread murmurs in Tory ranks, and the government’s standing fell to only 27 per cent in the polls of March 1981/ CR9 1929 To top it all, the ‘co-ordinator’ of the United Left, Julio Anguita, earns a higher rating in the polls than the leader of the People's Party, Jose Maria Aznar…; my italics). A comparable absence of idiomaticity is seen in the translations of Legislaturperiode (such as legislative period (BrE), parliamentary term [OW2]), the exception (parliament) being provided by LH in an illustrative example: “die erste (zweite) Hälfte der ~ the first (second) half of parliament”. Collocations clearly present problems for dictionaries: Koalition: eingehen and Stimmen: entfallen auf (OW2), and Neuwahlen: vorgezogene ~ ausschreiben (LG) are all found in only one dictionary. The last-mentioned combination provides a test both of the word list and the syntagmatic awareness of the dictionaries: BL and LH do not have Neuwahlen, and although PO and PSS offer re-election for Neuwahlen, it cannot be used in the collocation. Other dictionaries offer more parts of this collocation, which again however do not add up to the correct translation: LC for example has “es gab vorgezogene Neuwahlen the elections were brought forward” (s.v. vorziehen) and “Versammlung, Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 209 38 (2009) Wahlen to call” (s.v. ausschreiben). LG is the only one to allow users to piece together the noun elections (s.v. Neuwahlen), the adjective early (s.v. vorgezogen), and the verb call (s.v. ausschreiben) although its second English translation of German Wahlen ausschreiben (s.v. ausschreiben), go to the country, can again not be used in the collocation. 4. Intermediate - Some Aspects of the Microstructure Edinburgh International Book Festival 2006 - This year we have over 600 authors, from Nobel Prize winners to exciting new voices… We have words to soothe and to spark, to amuse and to amaze, to inspire and exhilarate... (http: / / www.arabesques-editions.com/ calls/ index.html? page=11; accessed 5 July 2009) Having already looked at some collocations in the last two tests, I now turn to further aspects of the microstructure of the dictionaries under review. This feature demands greater attention and analytical insight on the part of the lexicographer (as well as the critic and reviewer) than checking whether a word or phrase is listed or not. In this chapter I will look at two types of fixed expressions, British proverbs and American idioms, a type of intransitive use of verbs, and words that have many meanings. 4.1 Fixed Expressions Words in combination pose various difficulties for lexicographers. Apart from the usual problems (selection of items, appropriate translation etc) there is one that is characteristic of this type of lexical items - where to put them given that there are more than one word form to choose from. Various criteria can be used - e.g. the first word, the first lexical word (i.e. noun or adjective or verb), the most important word - and there is no uniformity of arrangement among the dictionaries: different dictionaries use different criteria, if they have a conscious policy at all, which makes looking them up a time-consuming business, and is of course a great argument in favour of electronic versions where the alphabetic arrangement is not an issue - full-text searches will find them provided of course they are included in the first place. Take the proverb all’s well that ends well: some works place it in the entry for well (LC, LCG), others in that of end (LG, LH) or the saying Every man for himself, which is listed under every (LC, LCG) or man (PO, PSS). Charity begins at home is found both in the entry for charity and begin in PSS. As the finance and business as well as the politics tests in 3.4 and 3.5 include a number of collocations, this section deals only with 20 British proverbs and 20 US idioms. British Proverbs Actions speak louder than words; all good things (must) come to an end; all’s well that ends well; better late than never; boys will be boys; charity begins at home; every man for himself; first come, first served; first things first; forgive and forget; horses for courses; knowledge is power; live and let live; money talks; out of sight, out of mind; power corrupts; practice makes perfect; small is beautiful; time flies; time is money. 210 Michael Pätzold 17 The 20 items are taken from C HARTERIS -B LACK (1999), who establishes a minimum number of proverbs based on the (then) 330m-word corpus of the Bank of English. His definition of proverb is no doubt open to discussion. 18 This example comes from http: / / www.spiegel.de/ politik/ ausland/ 0,1518,536976,00.html and is the legend under a photo of Mrs Clinton and Barrack Obama: Demokraten Obama, Clinton: “Worte sind wichtig, doch Taten sprechen lauter als Worte” (accessed 24 June 2009). 19 See for instance: “Wie Sie sicher wissen, konzentrieren wir uns bei Aldi Süd bevorzugt auf unser Kerngeschäft. Frei nach dem Motto ‘Lasst Taten sprechen’ verzichten wir deshalb auf jede Form der Pressearbeit.” (http: / / www.manager-magazin.de/ magazin/ artikel/ 0,2828,395896,00.html; accessed 24 June 2009). 20 Cf. MED, s.v. money: used for saying that money gives you power; LDOCE, s.v. money: used to say that people with money have power and can get what they want. 38 (2009) Of these 20 most frequent proverbs in modern English 17 , BL has unsurprisingly only 2 while LH’s result of 8 is relatively unsatisfactory. OW has ten, three dictionaries list 12 (PSS, DO and LG) while the top scorers record 14 (LCG) and 15 (LC) respectively. These figures have however to be taken with a pinch of salt as there are various difficulties with the dictionaries’ translations. To illustrate: none of the dictionaries seems to do a good job on actions speak louder than words. They mostly offer paraphrases rather than translations: “die Tat wirkt mächtiger als das Wort” (LC and LCG), “Taten sagen mehr als Worte” (the two PONS works), “Taten wiegen schwerer als Worte” (OW) and “Taten zählen mehr als Worte” (LG). Better and perhaps more usual versions are “Taten sprechen lauter als Worte” 18 or “Lasst Taten sprechen” 19 . For charity begins at home we find various solutions that are again more in the nature of paraphrases (LC, LCG, LG, LH, OW, PO) than translations (DO): both types are used in PSS, which chooses Nächstenliebe beginnt zu Hause (s.v. charity) and das Hemd ist näher als der Rock (s.v. begin). A Google search reveals that, first, neither phrase is very common and, second, that the paraphrase is often found in works or sites of reference with a mention of the English original while the translation appears more often in German-only and non-language contexts. If money talks is something to do with power 20 , then “mit Geld geht alles” (LC, LCG, OW) or “das Geld machts” (DO) are not so good as “Geld regiert die Welt” (PO, PSS). A more difficult case is horses for courses, as in this example: “… the aim of big law firms is not to compete with one another but to provide ‘horses for courses’ - the very best lawyer for any particular client in any particular jurisdiction. Mr Frank maintains that no single firm acting alone can provide this ... the best legal horse for whatever litigious course they find they have to run ...” (The Economist, February 28 th 2004, p. 75). This is what is on offer from the dictionaries: PO’s and PSS’s “dafür gibt es kein Patentrezept”; DO’s “jeder sollte die Aufgaben übernehmen, für die er am besten geeignet ist”; OW’s “man muß den richtigen Menschen an der richtigen Stelle einsetzen”; LC’s and LCG’s “man muss den Richtigen / die Richtige / das Richtige dafür finden”. There does not seem to be a translation in the strict sense of the word but an acceptable paraphrase that fits the above example can be achieved if one leaves out the modal verbs in OW and LC and LCG: ... jeweils den richtigen Anwalt für einen Klienten … zu finden. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 211 38 (2009) US American Idioms Bad: my ~! ; ballpark: in the ~; bat: be batting a thousand; bat: off the ~; bush: beat the ~es; care: I could ~ less; cut sb off at the pass; dibs: have ~ on sth; dime: a ~ a dozen; easy: over ~; face: get out of sb’s ~; figure: go figure! ; high spot: hit the ~s; hope: in ~s of; long: for the ~est time; sight: out of ~; sucker: never give a ~ an even break; trip: lay a heavy guilt ~ on sb; wax: the whole ball of ~; worst: if ~ comes to ~ In this test, PO and PSS are the clear frontrunners with 13 correct results, followed by LC and OW with nine, LCG (8), DO (6), LG (4), LH (2) and BL, which has none of the items. Two items (cut sb off at the pass = thwart their efforts and the whole ball of wax = the whole of something including the things connected with it) are not found in any of the dictionaries and another four only in one (be batting a thousand and for the longest time in OW; in hopes of in DO; and never give a sucker an even break in LC). PO has a bizarre translation for never give a sucker an even break (= don’t hesitate to take advantage of a fool): “schlafende Hunde soll man nicht wecken”. Finally, there are four items for which both British and American versions exist, and for which the treatment by the dictionaries differ significantly. They do best on American if worst comes to worst, which is found in six. The British I couldn’t care less is much more often listed than American I could care less (only four dictionaries have it), and while British in hope of and for a long time are found in almost all dictionaries, the American forms in hopes of and for the longest time figure only in one. This finding together with the overall result of the two tests shows once more that dictionaries cover British English better than American English. This is confirmed also when the direction is reversed, i.e. when the German equivalents are retranslated into English and US idioms looked for. For German lange warten (UK wait for a long / US the longest time) or in der Hoffnung zu… (UK in the hope/ US in hopes of ) only the British forms are listed. A rare silver lining is LG’s if worst comes to worst for German wenn alle Stricke reißen, while BL, OW, LCG and LH only list the British form, and PO, PSS and DO give if all else fails, which is literal and not idiomatic. 4.2 Transitive English verbs with object deletion My third aspect concerns English intransitive verbs, which must be variously interpreted depending on the context, as is shown by these examples: a) In 1970 Britain needed 23,000 more soldiers than she recruited. b) The Civil Service Commission recruits for both the House and Foreign Services. c) The officers came from all corners of the British Isles, the men recruited almost exclusively from London. In the first of these, the object (soldiers) can be understood from the immediate context while it is less obvious in the second sentence. Sentence c) has recruit in passive function, i.e. the sentence can be paraphrased as the men were recruited … Dictionaries cannot be expected to cover uses like a) but they should consider the types of verbal uses illustrated in b) and c). Moreover, given the context-dependency of the meaning of intransitive 212 Michael Pätzold 21 Here are two more examples: HGH 296 Indeed, any lexical analysis of spontaneous speech will bring to light a great deal of it -words and phrases which approximate, round off, exaggerate, generalize, qualify, and maintain vagueness or ambiguity --; in a word, there will be many hedges./ For the narrator is now coming to an awareness of life as mystery, full of passions that baffle, appearances that conceal, illusions that seem to promise, impressions that tantalize (from the introduction to M Proust: “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower”, vol 2 of In Search of Lost Time, London 2002, p. viii); the emphases is mine. 38 (2009) verbs, users would appreciate being given appropriately chosen examples and as much context as possible. In this section I will look at transitive verbs without objects, as illustrated in the quotation at the beginning of this chapter, and in 5.1 at intransitive uses of transitive verbs with a passive meaning. annoy, vex: (ASB 153) Suppose an individual were persistently to follow another on a public highway, making rude gestures or remarks in order to annoy or vex charge: Some solicitors charge per hour, but since there can be so many complications when you are buying or selling, it is almost impossible to get an accurate quote of what it will cost claim : I said I would like to claim for a smashed window. No problem. They [sc. an insurance company] would send a form. divorce: People who divorce do differ slightly from the rest of the population. flatter, convince: “You can make anyone like you.” Though she meant only to flatter and convince, this last sentence sounded accusing. hold: I made yet another phone call…’Hold on,’ she said, and I held until she returned. invent: ‘I just make the special pieces myself, the unique ones. In between, I invent for the general market.’ shake: Gus held out his hand, and we shook, seriously. Examples with object deletion are not all infrequent, indeed there are some, especially in literary criticism, which show a whole string of these verbs. 21 Five items in this test are well established (annoy, charge, claim, divorce, and hold), shake is perhaps a more recent usage and only flatter, convince and invent are a little more unusual. This distribution is reflected in the results: apart from annoy, the first six are listed in at least one of the dictionaries. Of the remaining five verbs, convince and invent are not recorded while flatter is listed in one dictionary (LG). Shake is listed with the correct meaning only in DO. LG also gives the correct translation but its example suggests that it does not have the object-deleted use in mind. Finally, OW2 does not use a classification for verbs according to transitivity so it is impossible to decide whether it covers invent or shake. It is surprising that the highest score in this test is three (LC, LCG, LG, OW2, PSS) while three more have two (BL, DO and PO) and LH manages one hit. It would seem then that transitive verbs with object deletion are another area in which lexicographers can improve their dictionaries. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 213 38 (2009) 4.3 Polysemous items My final section in this chapter deals with polysemous items, that is words which have more than one meaning, of which there are rather a lot in English. I have chosen twenty meanings each of a noun (rack) and a verb (meet) respectively to gauge the depth with which they are covered. Noun: Rack (twenty test uses, with explanations and/ or German translations in brackets) 1) I had reveille the next morning and you could bet your sweet ass that little shitbird was getting outta that rack at oh-five-thirty sharp. (= bed; US informal; German ‘Kiste’) 2) He was sitting on the steps of the saloon with the big rack of elkhorns over it … (US; German Geweih) 3) … the other serves as a drainage rack for a number of metal utensils. (Ablage, Abtropfe) 4) It [sc. a letter] asked my father (in very curt terms) why he hadn't registered his spice rack business for VAT (Gewürzbord, ~regal) 5) Clouds of steam from the dishwasher filled the room when the going got heavy. Every rack that emerged released a billow of steam, and I heaved the racks onto a steel counter to dry for a minute… (Besteckkorb; Geschirrkorb or - wagen) 6) Then comes Mattie with the coffee pot and a rack of buttered toast.(ein paar Scheiben Toast [im Toastständer]) 7) …ribs nothing earth-shattering, and overpriced at EC$38 for a small rack of ribs.. ([ein paar] Rippchen) 8) …with a single-button jacket. He looked and sounded as if his entire life were just off the secondhand rack. (…von der Gebrauchtkleiderstange) 9) … this Whitaker fella, just as calm as you please, grabs a towel off Barney's rack, wraps it up and walks Barney to the infirmary. (Handtuchhalter) 10) He took his overcoat from the hat rack and put it on…(Hutständer, Garderobe, Kleiderständer) 11) A growing collection of textbooks lined the lower shelves of the wall-mounted book rack positioned over the main desk. (kleines Bücherregal) 12) …the ABACUS, which has been known and widely used for more than 2,000 years. It is simply a wooden rack holding parallel wires on which beads are strung. (Rahmen) 13) … a rack of CDs and videotapes of various ownerships… (CD-Ständer) 14) Jason produced the bottle of red wine, slipped secretly from his father's basement wine rack earlier that night. (Weinregal) 15) We did a routine check, and it turns out that Victor Santana, the director, was renting a house that had a gun rack and the owner confirmed a .22 was missing ! (= Waffenschrank; Waffenhalter, Gewehrständer) 16) There was a barrel of lollipops beside the newspaper rack, a handwritten sign, TWO FOR A NICKEL. (Zeitungsauslage, ~ständer) 17) Seven addressed and stamped envelopes were loosely tucked in the catch rack, awaiting pickup by the mailman. ( in North America: the curved hooks under the mailbox meant to hold newspapers). 18) … regional and community-run visitors centres and information kiosks. Even the smallest Outback town seems to have one - or at the very least a pamphlet rack at the local service station. (Ständer mit Broschüren: oder an der Wand angebrachtes Brett mit Fächern) 19) Pretty cool train. Then I climbed up on the seat, wriggled my way into the luggage rack, and let myself down again, headfirst…(old: Gepäcknetz; new: [Gepäck]ablage) 20) Eyes lowered, they head directly over to their bicycles and scooters parked in or beside the yellow bike rack at the opposite end of the courtyard. (Fahrradständer) 214 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) LG has nine of these 20 meanings, LH five; PO, PSS and DO have four each, LC, LCG and OW three and BL two. PO and PSS list a number of rack-compounds in their entries for rack, which is helpful. It is striking that no dictionary has the two exclusively US American meanings (1 and 2), and only OW labels towel rack as US (it gives towel rail as the UK equivalent) - all this is on a par with their general unsatisfactory coverage of this national variety. Another fact is that though a number of dictionaries list toast rack, none has the quantitative meaning demanded by example 6. Where English has a rack of ribs, German seems to use mostly just Rippchen, but no dictionary tested has the English item anyway so the translation is not an issue. CD-rack (13) is a surprising gap in the dictionaries’ coverage while secondhand rack (8), catch rack (17) and pamphlet rack (18) are specialized compounds which only the larger, and vastly more expensive, dictionaries can in fairness be expected to list. As drainage rack (3) is only one of many words for the thing in question (others are draining [UK]/ drain[US] board), this may explain its absence from all works. Luggage rack is an interesting item because it has two different translations, an earlier “Gepäcknetz” and a later “Gepäckablage”, but only OW, LC and LCG give both. Verb: Meet (20 test items for the verb meet, with short German equivalents in brackets) 1) Have we met (before)? (Kennen wir uns [nicht] [schon]? ) 2) … he was having a birthday party and that I should come and meet his friends (.. ich sollte kommen und seine Freunde kennenlernen) 3) He liked the cock crowing on the wall and the boys running to meet him (…die ihm entgegengelaufen kamen) 4) “It's me, Vic. Can I come up? ” She met me at the door to her apartment wrapped in a bright red dressing gown... (…Sie begrüßte mich an der Tür) 5) …since the Greek classes happened to meet in the afternoon, I took Greek so I could sleep late on Mondays. (…Griechischkurse nachmittags stattfanden) 6) ...when Parliament was prorogued in December it expected to meet again in January. That Parliament never met again. (… im Januar wieder zusammentreten) 7) K5A 4963 Corsie now meets English champion, Mervyn King, in the quarter-finals tomorrow. (… trifft auf den englischen Meister) 8) ... when he'd been away on an unusually difficult trip, Sarah had met his plane in New York. (…hatte Sarah ihn in New York am Flughafen abgeholt) 9) He says if you can phone to say what train you're catching, someone will meet you... / She's my friend Ron's mother, she was meeting him off the Hogoff the school train at the end of last term. (am/ vom Bahnhof abholen) 10) How can we help students understand the new words they meet? (…die sie kennenlernen/ auf die sie stoßen) 11) CH7 5394 TIGHT-LIPS Taylor to-morrow meets the Press he's not been speaking to (…sich der Presse stellen) 12) Bonnie made herself look at me, except her eyes did not meet mine (…daß sie mir nicht in die Augen sah) 13) His face...has eyebrows that almost meet. (Augenbrauen, die fast zusammengewachsen sind) 14) ...the sight that met my eyes when I drew the curtain aside froze my limbs (…der Anblick, der sich meinen Augen bot) 15) The blast of noise that met Harry's ears when the portrait opened almost knocked him backwards (…Lärm, der an Harrys Ohren stieß/ drang) Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 215 38 (2009) 16) ... she took her hands away and put them in her dressing-gown pocket. The letter met her fingers. (Ihre Finger kamen mit dem Brief in Berührung, …berührten den Brief) 17) If a horse meets the first obstacle right, the others come in his stride (…das Pferd das erste Hindernis richtig nimmt/ angeht) 18) Situated at a point where the Ganges once met the Bay of Bengal… (einst in die Bucht …floß) 19) As if to meet the criticisms, 500 or so of them were to be sent to refugee camps in northern Italy and the Italian government, with German help, took steps to deliver food to ports in Albania (…um der Kritik zu begegnen) 20) It is a principal weakness of Sullivan's book that he does not clearly see the significance of the problem I am referring to or the peculiar strategy that Kant employs in meeting it (…um das Problem zu lösen/ behandeln; um dem Problem zu begegnen) The overall results are a little more encouraging for meet than for rack: the top dictionary, LC, manages a score of 10 hits, followed by LCG and LG with nine, DO and OW with eight, LH with six, PO and PSS with four, and BL with three. BL’s score is to be expected given its size but the low score of the two PONS works is a sign that they do not pay enough attention to this aspect. While all have the meaning of “abholen” for meet sb, only four dictionaries have the phrase meet s.o.’s plane/ train and even fewer (LC, LG) offer meet sb off the plane/ train. DO seems to be the only dictionary to be conscious of the combination of sense impressions (i.e. visual or auditory) plus meet plus appropriate body part, as in both examples 14 and 15 (LC and LCG also include no 14) but no dictionary considers the olfactory sense, as in The familiar sweet perfume emanating from the fire met their nostrils (not an item in the above test). All dictionaries cover, of course, cases where meet is combined with a human subject and object (except for example no 11 meet the Press) but when these are non-human their record is much less impressive: only three (LG, OW and LH) have a translation for example no 16 (berühren) while none covers nos 13 (eyebrows meet) or 17 (horses meet obstacles) or such sentences (not part of the test) as Harry heard Hermione gasp, horrified, as a gigantic serpent-tongued skull erupted from the point where the two wands met ... or Grey, ribbed trunks reached up and up over his head to meet a canopy of branches that was like the vaulting of a cathedral ...University people will also not be impressed by the absence of nos five and ten, and academics in particular will miss the useful construction (not included in the above test) Classes have been cancelled, so I won't have to meet my seminar (“Seminar halten, ins Seminar gehen, Unterricht machen”). 5. Advanced: Contrastive Aspects “You’ve stated that Diana accelerated the media’s frenzied obsession with celebrity, that ‘Diana sold papers like no one has ever sold papers’…” (http: / / www.britannica.com/ blogs/ 2007/ 08/ interviewwith-tina-brown-author-of-the-diana-chronicles/ ; accessed 7 June 08) This sentence made me stop in my tracks - Princess Diana a newspaper seller? Surely not, I was thinking and soon realized that the Princess is of course not the agent of the sentence - i.e. the person who stands on the street corner and sells newspapers for 60p - but that her role in the sentence is that of a facilitator: her unique appeal to the public was the 216 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) cause of the enormous increase in the newspapers’ circulation. Another example with the subject in identical function is “the Dalai Lama sold out the Wembly Conference Centre for 3 days”. These are only two - if perhaps particularly striking - examples of the differences between English and German that are at the centre of this section of my review article. I will look at three areas that involve structurally interesting and, as my students have testified to me over the years, often difficult differences between German and English on the syntactic and semantic levels. The first contrast relates to English intransitive verbal uses where the meaning is of a passive nature, a characteristic feature of the modern English language. The second feature relates to what is called raising in English grammar: certain lexical words (nouns, verbs and adjectives) allow the movement of sentence elements from the dependent into the independent clause, compare for example it is easy to please him with he is easy to please. Though this feature is not unknown in German (er ist leicht/ schwer zu unterhalten) and indeed other languages (cf. French ce sera un livre difficile à vendre this book will be hard to sell; Italian il suono è difficile da pronunciare this sound is difficult to pronounce), it is English that has many more lexical items with which this construction is found. The third difference refers to the realization of thematic roles (or semantic cases) in German and English. A well-known example is seen in English the boat sleeps six as against German “auf dem Boot können sechs Leute schlafen”. Again, although the locative can appear in subject function in German (“das Boot hat Platz für/ bietet sechs Personen Platz”), the realization of various cases in subject and/ or object function seems to be rather more restricted in German than in English. These differences, as they are less easy to spot than say neologisms or Americanisms, are likely to give a fair idea of the depth and quality of the dictionaries’ linguistic analysis of the structural possibilities of the two languages. This section also continues my investigation of the syntagmatic coverage: dictionaries need to be aware of differences, in the cases of raising and thematic roles, on the clause and sentence levels. 5.1 Pseudo-intransitive Verbal Use Pseudo-intransitive uses of English verbs are especially interesting, and difficult to process for Germans, no doubt because they are largely unknown in German (of which gehen as in das Buch geht gut seems to be a rare example). The classic verb is sell as in the book sells well, which is found in all dictionaries under review, but only five of them (LCG, LC, LG, OW2 and DO) cover the frequent extension of this phrase as in her novel sold 1,000,000 copies, which can be paraphrased as a million copies of her novel were sold. These verbs are often found with adverbs (especially well, see the examples for act, beat, and drink) but this is not invariably so (see attach, interview and launch). German translations can use the reflexive and lassen, as in sich aufschrauben lassen (for unscrew), though more idiomatic ones can be found (e.g. Das Stück ist sehr bühnenwirksam [for the actexample], and sie verkauft sich gut in Interviews [for the interview- Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 217 22 For a full discussion of restrictions see D IXON (1991: chapter 10). 38 (2009) item]). These uses are frequent and well established. Indeed, in theory all transitive verbs can be used in this way provided their subjects have the thematic roles of object or instrument. 22 The list of 20 test items act But if Love and Lewis Carroll is…rather prudish, it is not prurient; it both reads and ~s very well indeed, and is worth a hundred classy revivals arrange Bee stood... trying to ~ her thoughts. But they would not ~ attach the whiff of scandal that ~es to the family… beat the cream ~s well bolt the double front doors ~ on the inside convert the sofa ~s into a bed drink this wine will ~ well for the next few years eat cold lamb ~s beautifully, especially if cooked with herbs and mustard interview … she agreed to ~ for a part. Two days later she went to meet the director. The part, she was assured, would be hers launch The GT-R was unveiled in Japan last October, and will ~ in the U.S. in June lock After a fruitless hour I ~ed everything that ~ed and went down to the yard place The men's cross country team looked especially impressive this past weekend as they ~d first at the 40th annual Albany Invitational on Saturday poaches the egg ~es in the soup refresh This page ~es automatically every 2 minutes (BBC Sport Live Videprinter) take apart The final and irreducible layer of story telling, the Russian doll in the centre that will not ~, occurs within these dreams… transmit This particular form of the virus does not ~ easily to humans (of the bird flu virus) transplant Basil does not ~ well, so seed is sown one or two to a small pot, and then planted out complete turn off … she tried to turn the faucet off. And it wouldn’t ~ … unscrew I found that the end opposite the knob ~ ed if one tried, so I ~ed it about twenty turns update So people are after anti-virus software, firewalls, making sure they have the latest and greatest, and it ~s regularly. These are the results of this test: LG, PO and PSS include 7 of these uses with correct translations, LH six, DO, LC and OW five, LCG four and BL none. Clearly, this is nothing to boast about, especially considering that these passive uses of intransitive verbs are one of the defining features of Modern English. The nouns in this test fall into various groups, the first and by far the largest consisting of concrete objects (car, door, faucet, sofa etc) and these are also the ones that are covered best in the dictionaries. Of the three food and drink items (egg, lamb and wine) only eat is found (in LH). Of the abstract nouns play (i.e Love and Lewis Carroll in the actexample), thought, and from the IT sector site and software, only play is found in LG s.v. act while DO lists it in its entry for read, which I have nevertheless counted for its score. DO is also the only one to have an entry for refresh, but here I did not accept its translation “sich auffrischen”, especially as it does not work for the test example: the phrase 218 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) used on an ARD website is “die Seite wird alle zwei Minuten aktualisiert”. For update, by the way, Google finds many examples of the form “wird upgedated“ - oh brave new German! Human nouns do not get a much better treatment: PO and PSS alone are aware of these uses of interview and place. LG it is true does also have this use of place but gives too restricted a translation: “den zweiten Platz belegen”, which obviously does not work for my example. There also other difficulties with these verbs: DO for instance puts both the book sold 5,000 copies in a week and come unsrewed in the intransitive sections of their respective entries. It is difficult to account for the test results other than by saying that lexicographers do not seem to be sufficiently aware of this possibility as a structure generally available in English: why list the construction for unscrew but not take apart or turn off, convert but not launch? Whatever may be the explanation for this inconsistency, lexicographers could do much better. It is one thing to list the verbs in the English-German part, it is quite another to use them when translating from German into English. Of course, for German sich verkaufen (lassen) most dictionaries offer sell well/ badly but this is a well-known example and does not necessarily allow any conclusions about the treatment of other less frequent verbs. As German can often use lassen in the translations of English intransitives with passive function, I first checked a few entries for that verb. PO has no relevant verb-noun combinations in its lassen-entry while PSS does not even list reflexive lassen. LC, LCG and LG all have “die Tür/ das Fenster lässt sich nicht öffnen”, for which they offer two different translations, depending on whether the sentence is understood in a general (the door doesn’t open) or a specific sense (the door won’t open), which is an important distinction to make. BL and DO use intransitive close/ shut to translate German (ab)schließen but this is almost the extent of the dictionaries’ coverage. LC and LG do not give the intransitive translate for “das Wort lässt sich nicht übersetzen”, despite such examples as There is a word in Hebrew -davka -that does not translate well into English (San Francisco Chronicle, 18 September 2005; from COCA). In its lassen-entry, OW2 lists one relevant example “Dieses Stück lässt sich nicht spielen The play is impossible to perform”, where the intransitive act would not seem impossible (the play just won’t act well). In most cases, dictionaries only list the transitive use of the verb and not the construction with lassen, as in the entries for bearbeiten in LC, LCG and LG, so that there is no English translation for, say, ihre Romane lassen sich leicht für die Bühne bearbeiten, but compare Not all novels translate well to the stage. Other examples of the transitive use only are the entries for umwandeln (convert), verriegeln (bolt, bar) or zudrehen (turn off). Finally, I looked at what is on offer for abschrauben : I failed to find the intransitive use from the English-German test above. Instead, PO and PSS for example have “der Deckel lässt sich nicht abschrauben I can’t unscrew the lid” and DO proposes “etw läßt sich abschrauben sth can be unscrewed”. My overall impression then is that while there are signs of awareness of the existence of the use of English intransitive verbs in passive function, they are just this, signs, and not much more. Moreover, this awareness such as it is shows itself more often in the English-German than in the German-English part. Clearly, this is another area where dictionaries can improve considerably. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 219 38 (2009) 5.2 Raising Men were certainly found to be no more likely than women to discuss ‘important’ subjects such as politics or cultural matters … (F OX 2004: 49). English-German test believe Many Italians believe him to be bent certain The new countries are certain to fall behind complex This is a complex question to answer demonstrate The theories were demonstrated to be false difficult The market was difficult for small companies to compete in easy The definition is easy to apply estimate The population of Normandy is estimated to have declined exciting He’s exciting to watch fun Windows is fun to play with guarantee They could be guaranteed to make a nonsense of his views hard He is a hard man to defend hard act He is a hard act to follow hold Discrimination is often held to be the cause impossible Computer hacking is almost impossible to prove joy She’s a joy to work with know Germans have been known to smile, but unnecessary smiling is frowned on like I would like you to meet my closest friend love I’d love you to meet my friend mean Did you mean Jeremy to kill me? pleasure This ambitious work is a real pleasure to read prefer I’d prefer you to say what you feel prove He was proved to be correct report Ministers were reported to be outraged show Attitudes can be shown to be important suppose He supposed them to be Prussian think Louisa was not as disagreeable as he had first thought her to be tough The town is a tough place to live turn out The prize pupil turned out to be musical understand I understood him to say that .. unlikely The government is unlikely to meet the cost The items to be dealt with in this section fall into clear syntactic and semantic groups. Four of the adjectives (difficult, hard, impossible, tough) express various degrees of difficulty and two of likelihood (certain, unlikely). Among verbs, one group consists of verbs of liking (like, prefer), another of knowledge (estimate, hold, report, suppose) and a third of scientific verbs (demonstrate, prove, show). Many constructions in my list are well-established, like computer hacking is almost impossible to prove, I’d love you to meet my friend, or Windows is fun to play with. Raisings are in fact quite popular, or frequent, in English, which can be seen from the fact that they have spawned constructions, often in analogy with established ones, that do not admit the normal paraphrases. Take for instance the town is a tough place to live, 220 Michael Pätzold 23 Cf also sentences like these: Tucson was one hell of a dangerous place to live; the most difficult place to introduce market-based conservation methods is in international waters; Exeter is not an easy place to love, or Though Iran’s ruling fundamentalists make life tiresome, and sometimes much worse, for the secular majority, it’s still a hard place to leave, which all show the frequency of the expanded adjective + place + infinitiveconstruction. 24 This assumes the raising potential of BL’s entry: to turn out to be sth sich als etw erweisen. 25 Cf these examples from the British National Corpus: A6W 1329 The Spirit was exciting to drive … but never for any of the right reasons./ ACN 2441 That was an explosive quality, an urgency in the films that was exciting to write about./ AT1 343 I suppose the early days were more exciting to write about, distance lends enchantment and when you're younger, things have more impact on your life; he told the NME in September 1988./ BNP 458 An e's a lot more exciting to watch. C89 120 The best watercolour pencils are exciting to use… Also, as in the cases of complex, easy and tough etc, there are extended uses of exciting , cf. Early historic Scotland...must have been an exciting place to live; it’s the most exciting area to be in right now; Renaissance History. Very exciting period to teach; …an enthusiasm that made the French side the most exciting to watch of all. 38 (2009) which is likely to have been expanded from the town is tough to live in. 23 Equally extended are three more test items: this is a complex question to answer, he is a hard man to defend and he is a hard act to follow. The first of these is to be seen in parallel with this is an easy/ hard/ tough question to answer but needs a different paraphrase, compare it is easy etc to answer this question as against *it is complex to answer this question. My expectation was that these analogous formations would be found to a far lesser degree than the established ones, except perhaps he is a hard act to follow, which has almost taken on the status of an idiom. My hunch was borne out for the complexand tough-items, which are not found in any of the dictionaries, but not quite for he is a hard man to defend (similar phrases are found in LC, LCG and DO) and not at all for he is a hard act to follow (all works list the sentence except BL, LG and LH). The best results (out of 30) are scored by DO (23), LC and LCG (both 22); in the next group are PO, PSS (both18) and OW (17), followed by LG (12), LH (8) and BL (7). Well established usages were, as expected, covered by most dictionaries, for example turn out was found with a raised construction in all works 24 , while certain, easy, know and suppose were found in eight, believe, like, mean and think in seven. What was surprising was that none of the dictionaries has raising with the adjective exciting, which is quite common in neutral and informal registers 25 , and that both LH and LG should do considerably worse than OW, a much smaller dictionary. I would guess that revision work in the English-German parts of the two dictionaries has concentrated on new words (LH sports e.g. a special section of internet terms) rather than on structural developments, which are of course more difficult to spot and much less of a selling point. OW is also the only dictionary to offer raising with demonstrate (and in the passive, too, which is indeed common with the rather formal use of this verb). German-English Test es wird angenommen, dass Diskriminierung der Grund ist - consider/ hold/ suppose/ think: discrimination is held to be the cause es war beabsichtigt, dass die Konferenz … - the conference was intended to address the issue of racism Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 221 26 In one or two cases this construction has led to a wrong syntactic classification: LC s.v. wollen considers wollen, dass in the intransitive part of its entry, as do PO and PSS in the case of es wird berichtet, dass. 38 (2009) es ist bekannt, dass er … - he has been known to take a cigarette now and then es wird berichtet, dass Minister … - ministers were reported to be outraged es wird Jahre brauchen, die Ursachen zu beheben - Its causes will take years to remedy Archivare enthüllten, dass sie gefälscht waren - state archivists revealed them to be forgeries ich erwarte, dass Du mir glaubst - I expect you to believe me es macht Spaß, mit ihr zu arbeiten - she’s a joy to work with Experten glaubten, dass die Tagebücher echt waren - experts believed the diaries to be genuine es stellte sich heraus, dass er Recht hatte - he was proved/ turned out to be right es ist nicht leicht, mit Grizzlies zusammenzuleben - Grizzlies are not easy to live with die Arbeitslosigkeit wird auf … geschätzt - unemployment is estimated to be 21 percent sie werden sicherlich/ mit Sicherheit eine Macht … - they are sure to be a force in the new Iraq es macht Spaß, mit Windows herumzuspielen … - Windows is fun to play with es wurde darauf getippt, dass er … - he was tipped to win both Iowa and New Hampshire es ist fast unmöglich, Computerhacking nachzuweisen - Computer hacking is almost impossible to prove es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass die Regierung … - The government is unlikely to meet the cost dem Vernehmen nach soll er … - he is said/ understood to… seine Mutter hätte es vorgezogen, wenn er … - his mother would have preferred him to be a doctor Sir John wollte, dass er das Haus erbte - Sir John meant/ wanted him to have the house While there was an interesting spread in the results for the English-German test, the same cannot be said for the German-English one, as is shown by these figures: LH has five of the raised constructions; DO, LC, LG and OW four each; LCG three; PO and PSS two, and BL one. The most common item with the raised construction looked for in this test was wollen with seven hits (including BL), while sicherlich, mit Sicherheit was found in six, erwarten and leicht in three, annehmen (PO, PSS), sich herausstellen and dem Vernehmen nach (LG, LH) in two, bekannt (OW) and brauchen (LC) in one of the dictionaries. In some cases, dictionaries do list raised English equivalents but not of the German constructions looked for, cf. OW’s “die Polizei nimmt Brandstiftung als Ursache an the police assume arson to be the cause”, LC’s “das hatte ich nicht beabsichtigt I did not mean it to happen”, or BL’s “er ist leicht beleidigt he is quick to take offence”. There would seem to be at least two explanations for the failure of the dictionaries in this test. The main reason is perhaps that they do not include some of the very common constructions in German and can therefore not give a raised translation. This applies above all to verbs where the object is not a noun phrase but a clause introduced by dass. 26 Take the case of glauben: while the belief-meaning is fully treated (at least in the larger dictionaries) the think-meaning does not list the dass-construction. The same goes for beabsichtigen, schätzen, tippen and vorziehen, the only exceptions (in very few of the dictionaries) being annehmen, erwarten, and sich herausstellen. Nor is the dass-clause found for the adjectives unmöglich and unwahrscheinlich in any of the dictionaries. In the case of Spaß, things are a little more complicated: LC for instance offers the illustrative 222 Michael Pätzold 27 For a brief treatment of the textlinguistic rules governing the choice of the raised construction see LSGSW (2002: 337 ff, esp section 10.18). 28 LG does the same for erwarten: es wird erwartet, dass sie zusagen they are expected to agree, it is expected that they will agree; so too LH for dem Vernehmen nach: dem ~ nach from what one hears, rumour has it that, ist (od. hat) er …: a. he is said to… 29 French has for example on voudrait habiter la ville (said of Mme Bovary, who longs to live in town) or parler affaires/ politique = to talk business/ politics. 38 (2009) sentence “es macht mir Spaß / keinen Spaß (, das zu tun) it’s fun / no fun (doing it), I enjoy or like / don’t enjoy or like (doing) it”, but the raised English construction is available only when the person who is thinking it fun is not expressed (es macht Spaß, mit ihm zusammenzuarbeiten). The second, related reason would appear to be the dictionaries’ determination to give up as little of their precious space as possible. Examples are LC, PO and PSS, which include es stellte sich heraus, dass… but stop short of giving the whole clause, which would have allowed the raised English translation. LG is good on this item (es hat sich herausgestellt, dass er sehr kompetent ist) but this does not seem to be a consistent policy on its part, witness its entry for bekannt, where we do not even find the conjunction dass: “es ist allgemein bekannt it is generally known, it’s a generally known fact”. Insufficient context is a common failing in all dictionaries (except perhaps monolingual learner ones) and while reviewers keep pointing this out, dictionary makers and publishers do not seem to want to change their practice. Finally, to end this section on a more positive note, and give praise and encouragement where it is due, there are some entries that offer both the raised and the non-raised constructions so that users can choose. 27 LG’s entry for sich herausstellen is an example: “es hat sich herausgestellt, dass er sehr kompetent ist he turned out to be (oder it turned out he was, oder he proved to be) very competent”. 28 OW needs also to be mentioned here because it gives for erwarten two examples with raising: “Ich erwarte von ihr, dass sie sich entschuldigt. I expect her to apologize. Vom Lehrerkollegium wird erwartet, dass …The teaching staff are expected to …”. 5.3 Thematic Roles Although the relationship between thematic roles and syntactic cases in other languages is not always one-to-one either 29 , English again seems to be particularly interesting in this respect. The 20 examples in this section are concerned with the different thematic roles that can be taken by nouns in subject and object function. Besides the role of instigator of an action as illustrated in the introductory paragraph to this section (Diana sold more newspapers…), subjects can assume that of cause (deaths… closed the theatres; the stupid machine lost me at least half an hour’s work; rain stopped play), locative (Address, Regent’s Park Malthouse. That’ll find me ; the drawing room on the ground floor was missing all the pictures) or its temporal equivalent, as in This morning was to decide the fate of five people. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 223 38 (2009) The object can also have the role of locative (when Dad and I were driving a highway at night; Pro-government militias roam the countryside; shoot baskets) as well as that of instrument (can you shoot a .22 rifle? ). Another regular difference between the languages is that English often realizes the instrument role in the case of body parts as objects where German uses a mit-prepositional phrase, as in … the teacher pointed a finger at Julia and said, “Explain! ”; He was gagging for breath. Waving his arms about. Twenty test items with examples close The large number of deaths from plague in London closed the theatres for more than twelve months on end in the early 1590s. deal the police knew he was dealing drugs on a pretty substantial scale. decide This morning was to decide the fate of five people. find “My name is Steven Scott. Address, Regent’s Park Malthouse. That’ll find me.” fish They fished the bay and caught many crayfish. graduate 1969: America in turmoil. Al Gore graduates college. lose the stupid machine lost me at least half an hour’s work. lose “Did you know that bats begin beyond Bach? ” - “You’ve lost me.” - “Their entire range of hearing lies beyond Bach’s four octaves.” miss The long drawing room on the ground floor was missing all the pictures from the walls… point The teacher pointed a finger at Julia and said, “Explain! ” ride A bunch of women decided we’re going to walk instead of riding the bus after a long day of doing somebody else’s laundry … roam Pro-government militias roam the countryside, terrorising and beating suspected opposition supporters. see The 19th century saw a renewed interest in Arctic exploration. sell You’ve stated that Diana accelerated the media’s frenzied obsession with celebrity, that “Diana sold papers like no one has ever sold papers”. shoot Can you shoot a .22 rifle ? shoot … he would tease her and Mary Ann and kick over their cardboard play store accidentally on purpose pretending to shoot baskets by the garage. stop Rain stopped play again yesterday at Wimbledon. wave He was gagging for breath. Waving his arms about. Helpless. wet … when he wetted his bed he had to fetch up his own supper. wipe … one just has to wipe a cloth over it and the job is done. The results of the test items are as follows (but see also my discussion below): PO comes out on top with 12 listings, closely followed by DO and PSS (11); LG and LH manage nine, LC and OW 8 correct entries, while LCG with 6 and BL with 5 are at the bottom of the league table. No dictionary has the combination of close and deaths while two (PO, PSS) list rain has stopped play, although they mysteriously (and mistakenly) put it in the intransitive section of the entry for stop.Though DO does not have the combination of stop and rain, we find “bad light stopped play das Spiel wurde wegen schlechter Lichtverhältnisse abgebrochen”. All three dictionaries nicely bring out the underlying causal meaning by using German wegen. A similar sentence is found in both LG and LH in the entry for decide: “the weather decided me against going aufgrund des Wetters entschloss ich mich, nicht zu gehen”. 224 Michael Pätzold 38 (2009) While there are then some signs that dictionaries are aware of subjects in the function of cause, the two test items for the subject in locative function are not mentioned in any of the works. Again, however, mention should be made, in this case of OW, which has see with a spatial subject (s.v. see 15) “(nicht in der Verlaufsform) = Schauplatz eines Geschehens sein… This stadium has seen many thrilling football games Dieses Stadion war bereits Schauplatz zahlreicher spannender Fußballspiele”. What is, however, better served is the locative function of objects, at least in Progovernment militias roam the countryside (found in all works), wet o’s bed (all except one) while shoot baskets is only found in four dictionaries - either as “Basketball spielen” (OW, PO, PSS) - hardly the appropriate German equivalent in the context - or the more likely “(Basketball) werfen (Korb)” (DO), but my favourite, and explicitly locative, German version “auf den Korb werfen/ spielen” is found nowhere. Whether a similar awareness of the temporal function of subjects lies behind the correct translations of This morning was to decide the fate of five people as “über jds Schicksal entscheiden” (PO, PSS, LCG and LC) or “Schicksal besiegeln” (OW) need of course not be decided but for the combination of see with a temporal subject it is clear for two of the five that list it (PO, PSS, BL, DO, OW) that there is this linguistic awareness of the realization of thematic roles in English: the first is OW, which deserves a special mention for indicating the general equivalence between English and German and its translation, which uses a temporal prepositional phrase (s.v. see 14: “(nicht in der Verlaufsform) = Zeitpunkt eines Geschehens sein… That year saw the bicentenary of Schubert’s birth In diesem Jahr wurde der 200ste Geburtstag Schuberts begangen”. The second is BL, which comes perhaps even nearer to telling the user that see can generally collocate with temporal expressions (see vt 5 “[subj: day, date] today saw the release of his new film/ the end of an era heute kam sein neuer Film heraus/ ging eine Ära zu Ende”), although its German translation does not make the function clear (by formulating e.g. “Am heutigen Tage ging eine Ära zu Ende”, which works all right for era but not for film). It remains to say a few words on the instrument function of objects as in can you shoot a .22 rifle? DO, PO and PSS give the correct translation of “mit … schießen”, while LC, LCG and OW give the less explicit and perhaps also less convincing “ein Gewehr abfeuern”. LG is the only one to have wipe a cloth over sth. The two body part items are correctly found in seven (point a finger) and five dictionaries (wave arms about) respectively. Finally, in addition to the shoot baskets example above, a brief word on three constructions that are found (above all and apparently as yet only) in American English - deal drugs, graduate college and ride the bus to work. The results show again that American English is still somewhat underrepresented in bilingual dictionaries: deal drugs and ride the bus to work record four hits each while graduate college is only listed in LG. The results would have been worse if I had included things like …when Dad and I were driving a highway at night, or I head toward the game room and play the slot machines for about twenty minutes… Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 225 38 (2009) 6. Some Recent Developments In this final chapter I will address various points that often go beyond looking up single words and phrases, and that turn dictionaries from analytical tools into language-learning (e.g. through lists of lexical fields or speech acts) and -producing (e.g. through help with sections on writing) instruments that also further users’ language awareness (e.g. through explaining the meaning differences between synonyms or the meaning of cultural items). I will in addition discuss a new type of bilingual dictionary that addresses the German user exclusively. I will finish this review with a brief discussion of the CD-ROM editions of some of the dictionaries and the bilingual dictionary of the future. 6.1 Miscellaneous Changes First though, a quick word on one feature that has greatly improved the usefulness of dictionaries - the number of translations given has been drastically reduced. Where in earlier years we got a string of 6 or even 7 translations, now there are two or three at most, which usually are differentiated by collocates or some kind of label. There is only one dictionary that shows clear signs of the old way, and that is LH: in its entry for Einführung for example it lists seven undifferentiated English equivalents, presumably on the assumption that users will also consult its verbal entry, which does indeed have useful specifications. It could at least have met the users’ needs halfway by given a crossreference, but this is also sadly lacking. This not very helpful procedure does, however, not run in the Langenscheidt, or for that matter the PONS, family, both of which usually give enough context so that users can indeed use the English translations. And another brief remark: the different varieties of German are taken into account in much greater detail than used to be the case. This is true of all dictionaries, and is especially noticeable in PO and PSS. Some dictionaries (DO and OW2) now include short systematic treatments of the German modal verbs (e.g. dürfen, können and sollen), or entries in which synonyms are distinguished ( again OW; LCG has a great number of special boxes on such items as happy vs. lucky, hear vs. listen, or big, tall and great). These usage notes would help to keep students from making common mistakes such as *he states that especially epistolary novels were extremely popular during the eighteenth century. OW2’s observation in a note s.v. speziell is helpful (“Es ist nie das erste Wort im Satz”), although it overstates the language facts: the restriction mentioned holds only for especially in combination with the subject of the sentence, cf. this example: Mr Khamenei is likely to stay in ultimate power for a good many years yet. Especially if Iran manages not to be bombed in 2009… What is also offered in some dictionaries is lists of lexical fields, the outstanding example being LH’s extensive alphabetical list (pp. 767 to 912) of Internet vocabulary. Two dictionaries in particular need to be mentioned here that both address a school and university audience, LCG and PSS. Although in much shorter form than LH, they cover a whole range of areas, from computer terms, types of housing or fairground attractions (LCG), to more linguistic topics like onomatopoeic verbs and English proverbs (LCG), 226 Michael Pätzold 30 PSS lists good examples in its entry for sorry: “(polite preface to remark) I’m sorry [but] I don’t agree; I’m sorry, I think you have made a little mistake there” (English-German part, p. 1277). 31 This is what John Cleese of Monty Python fame and his therapist, Robin Skynner, have to say when talking about America and England in this respect: “Robin: When you went there thirty years ago, what first struck you? John: The energy and the rudeness. But then, I was in New York. Even so, I soon began to see how cultural was my judgement of ‘rudeness’. A lot of it, I realised, was simply directness of a kind I just wasn’t used to. If an American wants the salt, they say: ‘Pass the salt, please.’ Now, believe it or not, to an Englishman, this can actually sound rude! A bit blunt, and rather graceless. We’re more used to : ‘I’m so sorry to trouble you, but I wonder if I might be so bold as to ask you if you could see your way clear, if it’s not too inconvenient, to consider the possibility of, as it were, not to put too fine a point on it, passing the salt, or not, as the case may be’”. It is clear, of course, that Cleese is exaggerating here but the basic point he makes is important (S KYNNER / C LEESE 1993: 183). 38 (2009) Shakespeare’s English (PSS, which does however not include the frequent adverb still in its meaning of always) or British versus American lexical differences (LCG, PSS and OW). Finally, a very useful addition is help with the writing of texts, especially letters (including the dreaded area of punctuation), both personal and business, either in the form of a page or two (PSS, LCG) or at substantial length (DO, LC) and as a separate short book (PO). 6.2 Speech Acts, or “Die feine englische Art” A number of dictionaries include information on various speech acts, of which I will look briefly at the interculturally important ones of disagreement and contradiction and, in a little more detail, at thank-you sequences (referred as TY in the following). Contradictions are socially sensitive acts that are appreciated by nobody and need a specially cautious form in English to be acceptable: Notice that you need to be very polite when disagreeing with someone in English…[some examples follow: ] Yes, that’s quite true, but…; Well, you have a point there, but…; perhaps, but don’t you think that… (J ONES 1987: 43). PSS is of course aware of this and lists the yes…but structure and one fairly polite example you may well be right, but don’t forget… in its boxes on contradicting (English- German part, p. 267; German-English part, p. 1177). Still, it is unfortunate that most of its examples do neither include a question rather than a statement (e.g. But isn’t it more a matter/ question of…? ; Do you really think…? ) nor softeners like I’m afraid/ I’m sorry. On the latter phrase the English anthropologist Kate F OX has memorably commented: Like ‘nice’, ‘sorry’ is a useful, versatile, all-purpose word, suitable for all occasions and circumstances. When in doubt, say ‘sorry’. Englishness means always having to say you’re sorry (F OX 2004: 150). 30 Things may well be different in the States 31 , but in England at least, the proper way to behave is to use these little words if you want to be thought a pleasant person. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 227 32 This point is made in E DMONDSON / H OUSE : “In general, there may be a tendency in German to use Thanking illocutions less readily than in English and …to be relatively formal in the utterances used” (1981: 163). Some specific social situations are the following: “It is also polite to write and say thank you after you have been invited out for a meal (or to someone’s home) or been to stay with somebody” (Oxford Guide 1999: s.v. manners). Thank you is often heard on public transport, see F OX (2004: 150 f). 38 (2009) PSS also has a box on the speech act of thanking. In the box on p. 262 of the German- English part, we get six lines on thanking and four lines on how to reply to these thanks - in other words, the information covers the second and third steps in a thank-you sequence (the first being the [offer of a] gift or favour that triggers the TY sequence). The items listed for the second step range from unmarked (Danke! = thank you, thanks) to more emphatic expressions (Vielen [herzlichen] Dank! = thank you very much), and the same goes for the third step. PSS covers the main expressions well except for such colloquialisms as thanks a lot and thanks very much. Other relevant items are found in a culture note on p. 161, which adds cheers and ta (both informal British items), and gives national labels to you’re welcome (US) and not at all (UK). Apart from the inconvenience of having to look in two places, there is also no example with both steps two and three. For this we have to go for instance to PO: “kann ich helfen? - danke, ich glaube, ich komme allein zurecht can I help? - thanks, but I think I can manage”, or OW2’s “‘How are you then? ’ ‘Fine, thanks’”. Equally relevant for intercultural understanding, if not more so, is the absence of a brief note that the two cultures differ with respect to this speech act: polite English uses thank-yous considerably more often than German 32 - essential information for those German native speakers who want to be considered friendly and well-behaved in Britain. 6.3 Culture Notes, or Class-ridden England All dictionaries except LH also carry a second type of note in which users are told about aspects of British and American life and institutions. This helps users’ awareness by giving them a deeper insight into the culture of English-speaking countries. Thus, many learners have to be told that England and Engländer(in) only refer to (people in) England, and not (in) Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. But where to put this information? It may come as a surprise that, first , BL and LC do not mention this meaning, and, second, LCG and OW2 do not have an entry on England, but place relevant and related information s.v. Engländer (LCG, OW2) or Großbritannien (OW2). Only DO, LG, PO, PSS are both aware of the difficulty and meet it in the obvious place. Many dictionaries have a policy of not including encyclopedic terms, but England is clearly also a language item in its own right. The same goes for such German towns as Flensburg (er hat sechs Punkte in Flensburg) and Karlsruhe (die CDU will nach Karlsruhe gehen), which are conspicuously absent from all dictionaries with the welcome exception of the smallest, BL, which has “fünf Punkte in Flensburg haben to have five penalty points on one’s driving licence Br ODER driving license Am”, and for Karlsruhe “2. [Gericht] the Federal Constitutional Court”. 228 Michael Pätzold 33 Cf. this quotation from George Bernard S HAW : “It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth, without making some other Englishman despise him” (From the Preface to his play Pygmalion). In the standard social history of post-WWII British society I read: “Throughout this book I have stressed the importance of social class…”(M ARWICK 2003: 104). 34 “There are other class indicators - such as one’s taste in clothes, furniture, decoration, cars, pets, books, hobbies, food and drinkbut speech is the most immediate and obvious” (F OX 2004: 82). 35 F OX (2004: 76-79 under the ironical heading “The Seven Deadly Sins”, which has all my examples and pp. 305-313) mentions a great number of such words: cf. also G RAMLEY / P ÄTZOLD (1985: 313-314). Other standard works in the field are R OSS (1954) and C OOPER (1981). F USSELLL (1984) shows that, as expected, similar class contrasts prevail in the United States. 38 (2009) Further, while some of the dictionaries tell us in their English-German parts about Wall Street, there is no entry for Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, NY, whose name is “synonymous with the American advertising industry” [Wikipedia at http: / / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Madison_Avenue ; accessed 19 July 2009]. Nor is the Cavendish Laboratory listed (the place in Cambridge, England, where many famous discoveries have been made, e.g. that of the structure of DNA). What do they tell us about college? The word is of course included in all of them, but often there is only the obvious translation and a short explanation like “Wohngemeinschaft von Dozenten und Studenten innerhalb e-r Universität” (LH), which misses out on the fact that students also receive tuition from the senior members of their college (called fellows). This is captured by “einer Universität angegliederte Lehranstalt mit Wohngemeinschaft von Dozenten und Studenten” (LG). But there is nothing in any of the dictionaries about the colleges’ history, distribution (in England, by no means all universities have a collegiate structure), and importance in terms of their social and cultural role in Britain. Nor do the dictionaries say anything about the heated debate that centres around the (real or perceived) class bias of colleges and universities, especially those in Oxford and Cambridge. This brings me to my final point, that of social class. Social differences play a great role in every society, and certainly in English society 33 and in almost all areas of life 34 , but in England there is in addition a great awareness of these differences, as can be gathered from this quotation: My Valium-ed mother fluttered between them on the sofa. My father paced the hearth. When Norman gave voice to such idioms as ‘settee’, ‘pardon? ’, and at one point ‘toilet’, my father could be seen to wince as a man who is in pain will (A MIS 1976: 21). Linguistic class has also been the topic of a number of books and articles, both popular and scholarly, over the last 50 years or so that present a very detailed picture of linguistic class indicators. 35 Let me match two of the examples from the above quotation with their social class, and add a third: Pardon is used by the lower and middle middle class while blunt what? is typical of the working and upper classes, neither of which cares much about what other classes think of them. Toilet is also characteristic of the middle classes while uppers would use lavatory or informal loo. My third item is dessert, which is similarly middle class, for which members of the upper class tend to use pudding. Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 229 38 (2009) There can, then, be no doubt of the immense importance of these and other examples for an easy way into decoding class differences in England. This aspect is however hardly ever taken into account in dictionaries, and this includes also the bilinguals of this review. The fairly detailed entries in LCG and OW2 for example distinguish their English translations for German Toilette in terms of regions (UK versus the USA), public-private (flats and houses as against shops and department stores), formal-informal, obsoletecurrent but do not mention the social dimension. In the case of English equivalents of Nachtisch, the dictionaries indicate at best that a certain use is British (for instance LG s.v. pudding: “ a) Br. Nachspeise f, -tisch m…“), sometimes they forget to do this (again, I use LG as evidence, but the same is true of e.g. DO, s.v. Nachtisch: “dessert, Brit. auch sweet, pudding; umg. afters Sg”; this looks as if afters was restricted in its use only with regard to formality, but region is also involved, as is shown by the RHUD entry for after: “afters, Brit. Informal. the final course of a meal…”), and, at worst, they do not even list certain items (this goes for PO, PSS and BL, which do not list pudding for German Nachtisch). OW2 is the only exception: it states that meal terms “hängen in Großbritannien oft von der geografischen oder sozialen Herkunft ab” (in the box attached to its entry for Mahlzeit). This is fine except for two things: social class determines language use not only often but in almost all cases, and, second, other than this general statement there are no details on the social distribution, e.g. which class uses dinner and which lunch for the midday meal. I would like to end this section with a plea to lexicographers to make their users more sensitive to these facts in the English language and, indeed, to this dimension of linguistic structure - before I told them, few of my students were aware that languages, including German, are organised also in accordance with social stratification. The English materials are easily accessible, for instance in a Wikipedia article, http: / / en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ U_ and_non-U_English [accessed 16 July 09]. 6.4 OW - for German Users Only In this section I will discuss OW as a dictionary that combines many of the useful features that I expect a modern print dictionary to have. Although it is published by Oxford University Press as is DO, it is a completely new development, which is seen first of all in its clear, user-friendly layout (cf. chapter 2 above). Next, as the various tests in chapters 3 to 6 have shown, OW is, although not as good as the best of the other dictionaries, often better than can be expected for its relatively small size. Not the least of its attractions are the many examples which reflect present-day social reality, e.g. in its entry for gröhlen we find “Naziparolen grölend zogen sie durch die Straßen.They marched through the streets chanting Nazi slogans”. It also gives a great number of examples where others only give translations: “Wir haben uns nie großartig darüber Gedanken gemacht. We've never given the matter much thought” (s.v. großartig); “Hast Du die Akte greifbar? Have you got the file to hand? ” (s.v. greifbar); or “jdm grenzenlos vertrauen trust sb implicitly grenzenlos erleichtert sein be immensely relieved” (s.v. grenzenlos). Instead of the last collocation - grenzenlos erleichtert - OW 230 Michael Pätzold 36 Only BL and LG give short contexts for the adverbial use of grenzenlos. BL has these collocations: “weit, lieben, begeistert boundlessly; verlegen, erstaunt, traurig extremely”. This is what LG offers: “unermesslich immeasurably; grenzenlos glücklich deliriously happy; grenzenlos dumm stupid beyond belief, incredibly stupid umg.; jemanden grenzenlos lieben love s.o. with all one’s being”. 37 BL, LC, LCG, PO and PSS use English in their English-German, and German in their German-English parts. LG also uses only German, but provides glosses only in its (more recent) German-English part. LH uses German for its relatively few glosses in both parts. DO, finally, is a sort of halfway house: in its entry for go for instance it gives collocators in German while its brief contexts are in English: “(Fahrzeug) fahren; (Reptil) kriechen…(on skis, roller skates) laufen: (in wheelchair, pram, lift) fahren”. In its German-English part it only uses German as metalanguage. 38 (2009) could have chosen grenzenlos glücklich; dumm, or enttäuscht, which are all more frequent. 36 Its chief glory, and the one that sets it apart from the other works in this article, is the wealth of its usage notes, for instance the entry for Mal, in which we are given three examples where English uses the present perfect in contrast to German present tense: “Vorsicht bei der Übersetzung von „zum ersten, zweiten, letzten etc. Mal”! Ich bin zum ersten Mal hier. This is the first time that I’ve been here…” Another help, shared only with LC and LG, is its indication of the stress in “Darf ich Ihnen eine Gegenfrage stellen? Let me ask you a question. Hier wird das Wort you betont”. In general, OW’s usage notes show an acute sense of the important differences between the two languages. The only inconvenience that arises in some cases is that OW puts a number of usage notes in its English-German instead of its German-English part. Thus the entry for Gegensatz refers the user to the one on contrast, while its Ausnahme-entry does not even mention the writing tip next to except in the English-German part. In these and the next two cases OW, although it is clearly aware that the German user needs assistance, does not seem to have clearly thought out where she needs it. Again, the choice between English historic and historical as equivalents of historisch surely arises first and foremost when translating into English. Also, the note s.v. liegen that warns users not to confuse lie and lay is helpful but not as helpful for language production as the one s.v. lay: “Manchmal werden lay und lie in dieser Bedeutung verwechselt. Lay wird mit Objekt gebraucht, lie jedoch nicht: She was lying on the beach. Why don't you lie on the bed”. The second half of the note mentions that “In der Vergangenheitsform werden lain (von „lie“) und laid (von „lay“) oft verwechselt. Korrekt ist: She had lain there all night”. To put this less prescriptively, the note describes an ongoing language change, which provides an interesting insight into modern English that I would have also wished for the entry on historic(al), where more and more native speakers use the shorter form in preference to the longer. Another important aspect that shows OW is made with the German user in mind is its metalanguage: all semantic glosses or bracketed collocators are given in German. 37 The final point to be mentioned is that, in contrast to all others dictionaries examined in this review, OW has a policy of using few if any grammatical descriptors in the German-English part. This saves space for other things, and is likely to appeal to many students at school, college and university, whose knowledge of grammatical terms tends Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 231 38 (2009) to be somewhat underdeveloped. However, OW is not consistent in its application of its policy: while gegensätzlich and gegenteilig have no label, gegenwärtig does. Also, in its English-German part it steps back into the line of all the other dictionaries and uses classifications even where it does not seem to be necessary. What may be the reason for this? If German users are thought not to be able to handle them in the German-English part, have these same users changed for the English-German part ? Or is this an example of getting cold feet, of losing the courage of your own convictions? English has of course many more word forms than German that can be used in different word classes such as capitalist, must, or pocket and in these cases syntactic status would have to be made clear through examples. But no labels are needed in the majority of cases, for words like refuge, refusal, refutation, or refugee, which all have only one function. 6.5 CD-ROM Versions and the Dictionary of the Future In this final section I will look briefly at the CD-ROM editions of four of the dictionaries, namely LC, LG, PO and OW, and to round off my review make a few concluding remarks and suggestions for future developments in bilingual lexicography. All four CD-ROM dictionaries (I will use the normal abbreviations hereafter) can be accessed from other applications. Search words have of course to be typed in but LG and LC have an overwrite routine, so that one can write the new search word in the search box without having to delete the preceding word or phrase. While it takes two clicks in LC and LG, it takes three in PO and four in OW - in the last you have also to select the language. OW and PO give the entry looked for and a pre-defined number of items that follow in the alphabet, LC and LG by contrast allow the user to define for herself how much space she wants to allow other items. Next, a few words on search routines. All four offer both a headword and a full-text search, and while these find compound words when they are written as two words or linked by a hyphen, like art-house and clearing house, they do not find one-word compounds like bathhouse or gatehouse. Affix searches are successful for prefixes and fail for suffixes (e.g. -able, -dom or -itis). Collocations like to hang one’s head and idioms like to meet one’s Maker are found in three (LC, LG and PO). Similar results are obtained for phrasal verb searches, like meet up with: OW does not find it while LC and LG refer, surprisingly, only to the German-English part. PO alone finds it through its “Profisuche”, and in the English-German part, too. In addition, OW allows some field searches, e.g. education, food and drink, and money (“See this word in: ”) and PO has an impressive number of filters, e.g. for a number of different fields, styles and regions. A special feature of LC and LG is that users can download updates from the Internet once they have registered. OW, moreover, allows users not only to practice their pronunciation but also offers a culture dictionary (C ROWTHER 1997) as well as a monolingual production dictionary, in which the direction is, not from form to meaning, but from meaning to form. This allows you for example to find words in a particular topic area, e.g. s.v. shop are listed a number of words for big shops, small shops and shopping centres; 232 Michael Pätzold 38 For McKean’s dictionary go to http: / / www.wordnik.com (accessed 19 July 2009). 38 (2009) kinds of shop: what they sell or the service they provide; parts of shops; going shopping, and managing a shop. OW, in other words, is the only one that has taken a step in the direction of a proper use of the electronic medium, which is what I expect from my ideal bilingual dictionary, with a few remarks on which I will round off my review. The bilingual dictionary of the future will be up-to-date in its word list, will give a great number of examples and collocations, and with enough context so that they can easily be used for English text production. It will have discussions of synonyms and polysemous items, it will pay satisfactory attention to national varieties especially British and US English, and not just in the English-German part, and it will not neglect other varieties of English around the world. It will be compiled by lexicographers that know the two languages well enough to be aware of important contrasts, such as raising in English and differences in the realisation of thematic roles; and that devote enough space to the pragmatics (e.g. polite speech acts) and sociolinguistics (lexical class markers) of the two languages. And, if it does all this, it will no longer be a print dictionary. Some of the dictionaries, as I have indicated, have taken steps to reinvent themselves as tools for production and increased language and cultural awareness. But they are still miles away from making full use of the new electronic medium and, being commercial products, of a community of interested and enthusiastic users that contribute articles (compare for instance the Wiktionary, accessible on the Wikipedia site) and ponder the best translations in discussion forums, as happens on LEO, the bilingual dictionary most often used at present both by my undergraduate and graduate students, though by no means the best or most user-friendly, but that is a different article. The dictionary of the future will be a one-stop work that has music, pictures and videos, e.g. of cities, musicians, parliaments etc.; where the pronunciation of English words is given with their translations in the German-English part; where a specialist language interest may well be catered for, such as an etymological dictionary; where the always somewhat artificial distinction between language and encyclopedic entries is irrelevant; and where there will be cross-references to websites. In short, dictionaries will stop being one-to-one translations from the print to the electronic medium and will fully exploit the almost unlimited space they now have at their command. I want to end this article by giving a reference to an enthusiastic, challenging and entertaining talk about this impending revolution in dictionary making by a young American lexicographer, who is a collaborator on a new (monolingual) Internet dictionary 38 : http: / / www.ted.com/ talks/ erin_mckean_redefines_the _dictionary.html. Enjoy! Looking at an endangered species? The latest family of bilingual ... print dictionaries 233 39 Note: The works reviewed in this article are listed on p. 190 f. 38 (2009) References 1. Dictionaries 39 CanOD: The Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Edited by Katherine B ARBER . Toronto: O.U.P. 1999. COD11: Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Eleventh edition. Edited by Catherine S OANES and Angus S TEVENSON . CD-ROM edition. Oxford: OUP 2006. LDOCE: Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English. New edition. Harlow: Longman 2009. MED: Macmillan English Dictionary for advanced learners. Second edition 2007. Ort: Verlag .CD-ROM version 2.0.0702. OALD7: Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary. Seventh Edition. Chief editor Sally W EHMEIER . Oxford: OUP 2005. PBWB: PONS Business-Wörterbuch Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch. Barcelona [etc]: Klett 2006. RHUD: Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Third CD-ROM edition. New York 1999. SOED: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. Fifth edition. Oxford: O.U.P. 2002. CD-ROM version 2.0 2. Other References A MIS , Martin (1976): The Rachel Papers. London: Vintage. C HARTERIS -B LACK , Jonathan (1999): The Survival of English Proverbs: A Corpus Based Account. http: / / www.deproverbio.com/ DPjournal/ DP,5,2,99/ BLACK/ SURVIVAL.htm C OOPER , Jilly (1981): Class. London.: Corgi. C ROWTHER , Jonathan (1999): Oxford Guide to British and American Culture. Oxford: O.U.P. C RYSTAL , David (2004): The Stories of English. London: Allan Lane. D IXON , Robert M. W. (1991) A New Approach to English Grammar, on Semantic Principles. Oxford: O.U.P. E DMONDSON , Willis / H OUSE , Juliane (1981): Let’s talk and talk about it. München: Urban & Schwarzenberg. F ELLOWES , Julian (2008): Past Imperfect. London: Phoenix. F OX , Kate (2004): Watching the English. London: Hodder. F USSELL , Paul (1984) Class. London: Arrow Books. G RAMLEY , Stephen / P ÄTZOLD , Kurt Michael (1985): Das moderne Englisch. Paderborn: Schöningh. LSGSWE: Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English. D. Biber, S. Conrad and G. Leech. Harlow: Longman 2002. M C A RTHUR , Tom (1998): The English Languages. Oxford: O.U.P. M ARWICK , Arthur (2003): British society since 1945. London: Penguin. Oxford Guide to British and American Culture (1999). Edited by Jonathan C ROWTHER . Oxford: O.U.P. P ÄTZOLD , Kurt-Michael (1994): “Words, Words, Words: The Latest Crop of Dictionaries for Learners of English (Part I)”. In: Fremdsprachen Lehren und Lernen 23, 13-64. R OSS , Alan S. C. (1954): “Linguistic Class-Indicators in Present Day English”. In: Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 55, 20-56. S KYNNER , Robin / C LEESE , John (1993): Life and How to Survive It. London: Methuen.