Orð og tunga - 01.06.2005, Page 46

44 Orð og tunga
2. Reject all the translations (renderings) that are too idiomatically orientated to
the L2.
3. Reject all approximate translations and synonyms.
4. If no precise equivalent is available, give the approximate ones together with
the corresponding explanations.
5. Provide the necessary grammatical information for text production in the L2.
B. Kromann et al.
1. A fundamental need for semantic discriminators.
2. Necessary inclusion of non-transparent collocations and idioms.
3. Important to provide translational surrogates for culture-bound words.
4. (Potential) importance of deviating from the monolingual lexicographic prin-
ciples of the (monolingual) dictionaries of the L1.
Diagram 2
Concerning the first point, I. "Vocabulary restricted to the active, eve-
ryday vocabulary of the native L1 speaker.", it should be commented
that the vocabulary of Iðunn 1989 is indeed small, c. 22,500 entries.
Concerning II.A.l. "Equivalence - of all the possible candidates,
choose the one that fits into most (the largest number) of the L1 con-
texts.", the important thing to remember is that one should not at-
tempt much variance: the range of potential synonyms should always
be restricted.
II.A.2. "Reject all the translations (renderings) that are too idio-
matically orientated to the L2." This is an interesting point: Keneva
Kunz in her long review of Iðunn 1989 criticises our translations of
e-ð stendur til and hvað stendur til? as 'sth is brewing' and 'what is
cooking?' respectively (1988-1989: 173). This is exactly a case of the
dictionary-makers selecting one, idiomatically coloured, representa-
tion of a phrase instead of finding something that is more open and
which suits a wider range of situations or contexts ('what is going
on?' would, for example, have been more appropriate for hvað stendur
til?). It is a frequent error and a temptation that it is difficult not to fall
for.
H.A.3., "Reject all approximate translations and synonyms", is self-
evident, but concerning H.A.4., "If no precise equivalent is available,
give the approximate ones together with the corresponding explana-
tions", I would note that on this point too we were indirectly criticised
by Keneva Kunz for sometimes failing to add dictionary definitions
where translation equivalents were not adequate (1988-1989:172), but
a comment I would like to add in this respect is that certain modern