Comments on: Translators and Dictionaries

By: Celia Nieto

Celia Nieto — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 02:56:12 +0000

I’m both a translator and an English teacher and I totally agree with the advantages mentioned about the usefulness of a monolingual dictionary over a bilingual one. How can you translate a word if you don’t know what it means in the language it is used? Once you understand the word, if you can’t come up with a good translation, the bilingual dictionary may help you, never before. And if you’re learning the language, again the monolingual dictionary should be your first option, so you can have the word’s different meanings and, sometimes, collocations.

By: Nguyen Van Dinh

Nguyen Van Dinh — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 20:56:53 +0000

As a teacher of English to high school students in Vietnam, I ALWAYS recommend my students to use English – English – Vietnamese dictionary. This kind of dictionary is of great use to students as there are often mismatches between L1 and L2. I quite agree with Mariella Grech in that before asking students to use the dictionary, we teachers should encourge them to use the guessing techniques to deal with the new words.

By: Mariella Grech

Mariella Grech — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:50:08 +0000

I full agree that monolingual dictionaries are much better for students learning English rather than bi-lingual dictionaries. For one thing, in a monolingual dictionary, there might be more meanings rather than in a bi-lingual one. However, having said that, I first encourage my students to preferably first try to understand the meaning of an unknown word through my explanation; and to only resort to a monolingual dictionary or ultimately a bi-lingual one as a last resort and if all else fails.

By: Priscila

Priscila — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 17:47:10 +0000

I agree about the use of monolingual dictionaries. It is easy to not get out the real meaning of the word.