Orð og tunga - 01.06.2005, Qupperneq 45

Christopher Sanders: Bilingual Dictionaries oflcelandic
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tongue (reception of L2 [Icelandic] resulting in production in L1
[English])
c) creating a "free" text in the foreign language (L2) without a
model in the mother tongue (production in L2 [Icelandic]).1
This analysis helps our understanding considerably, and from now on
I will be using the term 'passive' to cover all of the functions that re-
late to the L2 user, even though some of them are blatantly 'active'.
We agree to call all of these activities "passive" simply as a conveni-
ence because they are orientated towards the L2, or foreign, user of
Icelandic, and not because they are all in reality intuitively 'passive'.
We can therefore already sum up the fundamental requirements of
a bifunctional Icelandic-English dictionary as follows:
a) to enable Icelanders to produce English
b) to enable foreigners to understand Icelandic
c) to help foreigners produce Icelandic (both as a translation exer-
cise and when producing a "free" text).
Iðunn 1989 blatantly attempts to be bifunctional and ought to fulfill, to
some extent, both sets of requirements. I will now comment on and, in
the case of certain features, test this with reference to recent theorising
about bilingual dictionaries.
2.1 Assessment of Iðunn 1989 on the basis of the theoretical
requirements - "active"
USER NEEDS L1 ->■ L2 (= "ACTIVE")
I. macrostructure
Vocabulary restricted to the active, everyday vocabulary of the native L1 speaker.
II. microstructure
A. Scerba (from Mikkelsen 1992).
1. Equivalence - of all the possible candidates, choose the one that fits into most
(the largest number) of the L1 contexts.
’Mugdan also lists the extreme possibilty that an English speaker might use an
Icelandic-English dictionary as extra support or "double-check" when translating
from English to Icelandic.