A new English-Greek dictionary is not an everyday event. A new bidirectional, electronic English-Greek dictionary specially geared towards the needs of English speakers, whose richness of content surpassess that of any other similar dictionary ever published in the history of Greek lexicography, is an event which should be celebrated.

           I believe that the opening paragraph sets the tone for this review. The late lexicographer (he passed away in June 2001) when referring to his two latest dictionaries (what have come to be the "Golden Version" and the "Ideal for English Speakers Version") pointed out to me what I perceived as an exaggeration:

           This (referring to the "Golden Version") is not a dictionary [worthy of its title], this (referring to the "Ideal for English Speakers Version") is a dictionary!

           Indeed, a brief look at the statistics speaks volumes of their quantitative differences (20% more main entries contained in the latter dictionary, twice as many pages, definitions in English, see Table 1). Their qualitative differences however, are not significant. The same meticulous work has been done for both of them. We can say that in a sense, the latest dictionary is in many ways an enrichment of the previous one.

           However, its different approach and scope is obvious (quoting from the lexicographer's introduction):

       Its originality lies in the fact that it is quasi-bidirectional, moving from the usual "source to target" to an elucidatory "target to source"range of treatment, thus enabling the user to know exactly what each term means in either language. This feature is further enhanced by illustrative examples, labels, illustrative phrases, compound entries and sentences, as well as by a variety of elements helping to clarify this meaning and the application of each term. Moreover, it is user-friendly because the entries are listed separately, i.e. they are not embedded within a consolidated paragraph that is alphabetized under a term from which they were derived or with which they share a common element.            

A close look at the example entry (Table 3) is enough to illustrate the differences. For example, in the Ideal for English Speakers dictionary:

• Each different Greek translation provided for a main entry is accompanied with an English definition in parenthesis. For example the first translation of the main entry manager διευθυντής is followed by the English definition: (a person controlling or administering a business or part of a business). This feature, in effect, accounts to a great extent for the bulkiness of this version because it is like using a combined English monolingual and English-Greek bilingual dictionary.
• There are gender labels (masculine, feminine, neuter) and gender endings (θεατρικ|ός|ή παραγωγός)
• The Golden Version provides pronunciation for English words whereas the Ideal for English Speakers provides pronunciation for Greek words.

To summarize, I would say this is a truly original lexicographical approach, a unique tool for all and ideal for English speakers.

           On a lighter vein, we can say that the only unfortunate event is the title chosen by the lexicographer for its prototype print edition: Analexicon. When spelled in Greek (Αναλεξικό, an allusion to ανάλεκτα - analecta, in English meaning literary gleanings, miscellanea ) is OK, but when spelled in English (as it is actually spelled on the cover of the prototype print dictionary) it most definitely acquires... unsavoury connotations.

How do I switch interface language?

There is a workaround. Go to the Dictionaries Explorer's directory (Program Files usually) and locate the file interface.ini. Open this file and add any character before the [el] (if you have Greek locale and you want to switch to the English interface). In case you have English locale and want to switch to Greek add any character before the [en].            The interface used for Magenta's dictionary is equally impressive (read more about it at Table 3). And with a few changes in the settings Greek users can hide or shrink the elements which are of no use to them (i.e. gender labels through View->Compress/Hide gender [sic] (Προβολή-> Σύμπτυξη/Απόκρυψη γένους) as you can see in Figure 1. The interface language is based on one's locale. If your locale is English then you will get an English interface. Unfortunately there is no standard way to switch interface language (another item in my Magenta wish-list!).

           

                      Figure 1: Dictionaries Explorer II View menu

           Minor improvements have taken place in the interface Dictionaries Explorer II. One of them is that the user dictionary module has become more user friendly with the addition of menus. The developer appears to be listening and in a future version will completely rehaul the module to enable csv import /export of entries (that is to say import/export from delimited format, for example glossaries prepared in Excel) making this a really useful tools for terminologists and translators.


                             Figure 2: User Dictionary window


           One of the bugs which have not been addressed is the inability to copy text from definition section of the dictionaries by using the shortcut Ctrl+C. Instead one has to use the menu (Edit->Copy).

*This is based on the self-published print editions of the lexicographer entitled Περιεκτικό Αγγλοελληνικό Λεξικό, Athens, 1995 (its electronic version being Magenta's Golden Version) and Analexicon, A Bidirectional English-Greek Dictionary, Athens, 2001 (its electronic version being Magenta's English-Greek-English Dictionary Ideal for English Speakers ) with the exception of items with double asterisk (**) which apply only to the electronic versions. None of these original print editions are available today (with the Analexicon very hard to find even second-hand as it was a very limited, 100 copy edition); however, a much more professionally printed edition of the the Περιεκτικό Αγγλοελληνικό Λεξικό is available as Golden Edition in print format (Magenta, 2002, 838 pages).

Links

Article on Bilingual Lexicography by Panagiotis Tsampounaras
Download other demo versions of Magenta's dictionaries (they will run for 15 minutes, then you will have to restart your PC for them to run again)