The subtitle of this erudite work says it all: this is a top‐level “how to do it book”, designed for lexicographers, language students and teachers, translators and academics. Its Swedish author, Bo Svensén, is supremely authoritative, on the basis of long experience in dictionary compilation and in the requisite linguistic disciplines. His previous book was translated from Swedish as Practical Lexicography: Principles and Methods of Dictionary Making (Svensén, 1993). The Swedish original of this new book is Handbok I Lexikografi (Svensén (2004). For its English edition, the text has been updated, and some oversights corrected. Specifically Scandinavian references have been excluded, and in the monolingual examples Swedish has usually been replaced by English, in some cases by French or German. In bilingual examples, the user's native language is mostly English, the foreign language being either German or French. Svensén's new work covers most aspects of his subject meticulously and in detail. Especially notable is that it refers throughout to both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries, thereby enhancing its international utility. There is an especially full account of key lexicographical problems: the writing of definitions, and the selection and presentation of equivalents. Not for Svensén the nonsense of one‐word‐for‐one‐word lists, blithely ignoring nuances of meaning. Optimum treatment of standard dictionary features, such as pronunciation, inflexion, constructions, collocations, and idioms is described systematically in individual chapters (of the 28 making up the book's main text).
The book is really outstanding in its discussion of dictionary structure, collection and selection of material for inclusion, illustrations, management of dictionary projects, law and ethics in lexicographical work, dictionary evaluation and criticism. The last of these topics is particularly useful, as a guide to which dictionary is truly worth acquiring, and to what style of dictionary one can rely on. Alongside his perceptive survey and analysis of print lexicography, Svensén discusses the expanding role of the World Wide Web, electronic corpora, electronic dictionaries, and compilation software used in dictionary‐making.
Typical of the lucidity of Svensén's exposition is his Chapter 5 The Lemma – of which a common, but less precise, synonym is “headword”. How lemmas may be established is discussed in terms of homonymy and polysemy; historically; on the basis of semantics and of morphosemantics; in terms of formal grammar. A first‐rate exposition! Each chapter concludes with literature recommendations, and is accompanied by illustrations and tables, sourced in esteemed dictionaries published in the USA, Great Britain, and other European countries.
For me, personally, as an erstwhile compiler of dictionaries of Micronesian and Polynesian languages, Svensén's most fascinating section is Chapter 15 Examples. He quotes Pierre Larousse, “Un dictionnaire sans exemples est un squelette”. Examples, illustrations of usage, are crucially important in lexicography. I would add to that principle the desirability of giving some indication of what Bronislaw Malinowski termed “context of situation”.
The ultimate perfection is, indubitably, a dictionary “compiled on historical principles”, e.g. our very own Oxford English Dictionary (OED), and several “encyclopedic” dictionaries such as Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged and the Grand Larousse Universel, monumental in its 15 volumes. A developing field is that of the encyclopedized learner's dictionary, pioneered notably by Longman and by Oxford University Press. In bilingual dictionaries, encyclopedic information, particularly about the other culture, has been found to have a favourable effect on both active and passive language proficiency.
Mastery of the complexities surveyed by Svensén will lay a sound foundation for actually compiling a dictionary. The routine and parameters for so doing are outlined in Chapter 24 Dictionary Projects and in Chapter 25 Legal and Ethical Aspects. Copyright problems loom large! Few readers of this review will yet have encountered the concept of “dictionary criminality” – becoming more acute with the evolution and spread of electronic dictionaries, which may constitute a digitized version of a print dictionary or have been produced from the very outset as an electronic dictionary.
Internet dictionaries can be continuously subjected to central updating, unlike most, if not all, CD‐ROM dictionaries. New exponential developments include the pocket electronic dictionary and the electronic reading pen. A Swedish reading pen is said to be capable of explaining some 500,000 scannable Swedish words. “This function may be supplemented by English speech synthesis and an English‐Swedish dictionary enabling it to read out scanned English text as well as Swedish translations of some 300,000 scannable English words”. Sign of things to come!
Bibliography (pp. 488‐520) is a magnificent reference resource in itself, paralleled by the very thorough Index (pp. 521‐535). I have wholehearted admiration and respect for Bo Svensén's superb Handbook of Lexicography, unlikely ever to be bettered as a guide to how to make and use dictionaries. It is an essential acquisition for all academic libraries, and for all with a serious interest in the use of words.
