The Role of On-line Laboratory in the Development of Lexicographic and Translational Skills

Abstract

The Project of Laboratory on Bilingual Lexicography is based on the German Chair of the Higher School of Russian and Foreign Philology, Institute of Philology and Communication named after Leo Tolstoy, Kazan Volga Federal University, in the Republic of Tatarstan and meets all the requirements of the modern innovative pedagogics and linguistics. Educational aspect of the Laboratory lies within the experiment of teaching foreign languages through practical aspects of lexicography and lexicology studies. The academic contribution of the Laboratory is the lexicographical description of the multi lingual environment of the Republic of Tatarstan, the creation of bilingual dictionaries in studied foreign and native languages, writing research papers and articles, working at monographs, as well as the collection, storage, organization and analysis of the research results. The first project of the Laboratory was an English-Tatar Dictionary of Slang Expressions that contributed to the enhancement of lexicographic and translational skills of students.

Keywords: Lexicography, dictionary, translation, slang

Introduction

The Project of Laboratory on Bilingual Lexicography is based on the German Philology Department,

Institute of Philology and Communication, Kazan Federal University, and meets all the requirements of

the modern innovative pedagogics. The main tasks of the laboratory are: 1) systematic research on the

topic of bilingual lexicography; 2) creation and preparation for the publication and republication of

different types of bilingual dictionaries in the Republic of Tatarstan; 3) accumulation and preservation of dictionary materials of scientific, historical, and cultural value, in the form of traditional and

electronic files; 4) implementation of the results of the work in the educational process of the

University and schools, in the academic work of pupils, students, teachers in the Republic of Tatarstan

in order to improve foreign language literacy.

The subject of this course is a phenomenon in bilingual lexicography. The course "Bilingual

lexicography" is based on an analytical approach to learning the practical skills of a lexicographer in

the locality of regional languages and cultures of the Republic of Tatarstan. This symbiosis of

phraseology, lexicography, theory of translation, aims at the formation of the skill of accurate

translation of concepts familiar or unfamiliar to other languages speakers. The course focuses on the

study of macro and micro-structure of vocabulary development, stylistic, functional and grammatical

labels, presentation phrases, idioms and phrasal verbs in the text of the dictionary, definition of terms,

internationalism and borrowing; existing classifications of bilingual dictionaries, as well as studies of

trends in domestic and foreign linguistics. The textbook will cover issues such as, collecting corpus

data, planning the dictionary, planning the entry, equivalence factors, writing an entry, polysemy,

stylistic and thematic registers, etc.

The first project of the laboratory served as the material of the experiment that was held in academic

year 2014/2015 with Masters and Bachelors of the Department of German Philology. The students were

to find equivalent, analogues of slang English expressions in the Tatar language. In the course of the

experiment, researchers practiced their translational skills, selecting the best way of translating the

mono lexemic or phrasal slang expression. The final goal of the experiment was to compile a brief

dictionary, taking decisions on its macro-structural and micro-structural levels, thus, the first steps in

lexicography were undertaken by the young dictionary makers.

Problem statement

Though the field of comparative philology is well researched in the Republic of Tatarstan, as it is a

natural multilingual environment due to its historic and political background, not all the aspects are

well studied. Bilingual Lexicography is viewed more as a practical part of an academic work, when a

brief bilingual dictionary of idioms or words represents a practical part of a dissertation. The findings of

these multiple lexicographic studies have neither been compiled and nor classified. None of the Masters

Programme in Kazan universities have included a course on bilingual lexicography with an accent of

practical skills training. There has been no platform for students and masters to practice and develop

their lexicographic skills within the scope of the studied languages: English, Spanish, German, French,

Turkish, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, Korean, and native languages, Russian, Tatar, Chuvash, Udmurt, etc.

Our attempt to create a Laboratory on Bilingual Lexicography (BLL further on) will be beneficial

for masters, as a practical part of the optional course “Bilingual Lexicography” of the two year Master

Degree Programme 45.04.01 – Philology: Roman and German Philology that was opened in 2016. The

skills in lexicography will provide masters with opportunities to become lexicographers in future and

specialize in making dictionaries.

Research questions

To test the effectiveness of the collaborative work in laboratory, the experimental English-Tatar

Dictionary of slang expressions was compiled in the Laboratory on Bilingual Lexicography, based at

the German Philology Department under the supervision of the Associate Professor of the Department

G.R. Safiullina. The Masters students; Lilya Mirgalimova, Elza Garipova (group 10.1 – 418), and 4th

year students; Lilia Shaehova and Dina Zaripova (group гр. 10.1 – 205) took part in this project.

The 120 slang expressions were chosen to attract the attention of the young researchers, and to

inspire their academic spirit to study the topic that has never been studied before. Students were very

interested in the topic of the research. The work on compilation lasted two months instead of the

planned three. The task for each researcher was to translate 30 slang expressions, from English into

Tatar. The slang expressions were diverse both from grammatical and semantic point of views; verbal

phrases, noun phrases, clichés, nouns, adjectives and adverbs. The main purpose of project was to

practice translational skills, and find the optimal ways to translate slang expression from English into

Tatar. Researchers were to select from claques, analogues, mono lexemes, descriptive translation,

combined translation.

Purpose of the study

The main purpose of this study is to define how the dictionary making process influences the

motivation of students to study English as a foreign language, how it influences mastering the lexical

structure of the studied language, how it influences the development of translational skills, and how it

influences the bilingual dictionary making in deciding on the concept of the laboratory.

The project of the laboratory is to synthesize and analyze the results of previous studies of Kazan

linguists, to classify them and to offer the methodology to masters of the specialty of Philology: Roman

and German Philology. It would help to future lexicographers to study theoretical works on

lexicography, to learn new dictionary making technologies, to master the multi-sided and multi-layered

process of producing a dictionary.

Research methods

The basic method of research was the method of experiment. The slang expressions were selected

with the help of continuous sampling methods, and they were analysed by the method of statistical

analysis; translation of the slang expressions were based on methods of structural and grammatical

analysis. For further studies of bilingual lexicography the following programmes will be used:

dictionary making programme of Tshwanelex and corpora thesaurus Sketchengine, that offers a wide

range of examples, concordances, data on lemma`s collocation characteristics, with the opportunity of

creating individual corpus of a dictionary maker. The theoretical part of the project was based on the

works on lexicography of Atkins B.T.S. (2008), Cowie A.P. (1984), Rundell M.(1998, 2006, 2008,

2012, 2016), Fontenelle T. (2008), Zgusta L. (1987), Moon (2010) in which many theoretical and

practical aspects of bilingual lexicography were studied and the suggested results were used by the

students prior to making up a short dictionary.

Findings

Findings of the project of compiling a bilingual English-Tatar dictionary of slang expression are

divided into two groups: academic philological and methodological. Translation of lexemes and idioms

of far distanced languages is a complicated issue itself. While selecting the best way of translation, we

should take into account the following factors: transparency/intransparency of the inner form of

components or idiomatic phrase, and the existence of analogues (Varlamova, & Safiullina, 2015). The

findings done by the masters students as a result of the project are 1) optimal ways of translation of

slang expressions are descriptive, lexical and analogue translation; 2) idiomatic lacunas could be

translated by lexical equivalents, for example i) ace (really good, exceptional) бик яхшы, искиткеч; ii)

mate (friend) иптəәш 3) slang verbal collocations are to be translated by analogues, for instance I) twit:

idiot, stupid person. Шыр тиле, сарыкбаш; ii) easy, I'm easy; I don't mind, I have no preference one-

way or the other. – мин борчылмыйм, дулкынланмыйм; башка чараюк; iii) descriptive translation:

iv) slog (something very difficult) aт эше, авыр эш; v) wheelie, do a: cycle with the front wheel in the

air - Кəәҗəәгəә утырту, басу, and so on.

Methodological findings are 1) masters students were given individual tasks and coped with

difficulties on their own; 2) they analyzed the lexemes and singled out slang expressions; 3) they

checked and revised the spelling of words, as their parts were to be checked later by a teacher; 4) they

studied the types of translational equivalents and analogues; 5) they applied practical work to all the

means of translation of a) mono-lexemes; b) collocations; c) idioms.

The masters students were deeply interested in the subject of lexicography and planned to continue

this activity in future.

Conclusions

The translation always was, is and will be one of the most complicated aspects of comparative

philology; the lexical, grammatical, stylistic features make the logical and semantic basis of

transformations. BLL will base on the experience of Kazan Linguistic Schools, and vastly use the

heritage of the specialists in Comparative Linguistics of the 20th and 21st centuries. The laboratory will

be supported on the international level by colleagues who specialize in lexicography and corpus

linguistics, the corpus part will be based on Sketchengine, the OUP English Dictionaries will serve as a

landmark in the sea of lexicography. The creation of the textbook is the basic analytical method that

will immerse and help out young researchers in the scientific environment. Thus, the effective methods

of teaching key issues in lexicographical theories to young lexicographers are applied.

The project of English-Tatar Dictionary of Slang performed by four young researchers under the

supervision of a lexicographer proved to be very effective for developing their translational and

lexicographic skills. The students revised their knowledge of translation forms and found out the optimal ways for rendering slang expressions. The students studied the types of dictionaries and

experimented on building an article, based on solving problems of micro-structural organization of a

headword. Parallel to the main process, a huge layer of lexical structures was revised, some new words

were learnt. Moreover, the project was fulfilled in the native language of the researchers, which

contributed to their national awareness and multi lingual skills.

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