Guidelines for editors/translators
In order to ensure compatibility of different language segments and a minimum standard
of uniform processing of the dictionary material, please observe the following guidelines:
1. We expect your language version of the dictionary to be returned in electronic form,
any reasonable word procesor, preferably Word for Windows (any version). For the results
please use one of the following formats:
- You can use the enclosed file and expand it with your language equivalents; enter
the dollar sign ($) between English and your language as a field separator in this case:
e.g.: 9#abecedary$your language term
- or you can write an entirely new file comprising the sequence number and your language
equivalent only, separated by the dollar sign ($):
e.g.: 9$your language term for "abecedary"
2. There will be a great variety of file formats and special characters from a number of
languages, and not all the languages follow the same alphabetic order of the characters;
to ensure swift and error free conversion of the files please send a sample of your
character set (in the correct alphabetic order) as used in the dictionary (printed and
in electronic form, using the same text editor you are using for the dictionary) in a
single file or preceding the dictionary file.
e.g.: Slovenian:
3. Duplications: due to technical and organizational issues of the project the basic
English "core vocabulary" has not been edited prior to distribution, so in some cases
there will still be duplicates. Ignore them, please, indicating the duplicate
(second item) by "(duplicate?)":
e.g.: 480#bibliomania$(duplicate?)
or 480$(duplicate?)
Some of the duplicates might reflect the difference between the British and American
usage; they will be discarded during the processing of the dictionary if necessary.
Reduced to a single item will be the "hyphenated twins" (e.g. 666#book-jacket and
690#bookjacket).
4. There will be cases when you are incertain about the equivalents in your language;
write the dubious term anyway, followed by three question marks (???); you will have
the opportunity to correct it later during the proofreading of the entire dictionary
in your language.
e.g..: 9#abecedary$abecednik ???
or 9#abecednik ???
If you do not have or do not find a suitable equivalent in your language at all, enter
three asterisks (***) instead; you will have the opportunity to include it later, as well.
e.g.: 9#abecedary$ ***
or 9# ***
5. Cross references, synonymous and antonymous relations will not be indicated in the
dictionary. There are a number of synonyms in the dictionary, however, so you may use
the same term in your language to cover two or more English synonyms, if appropriate.
e.g.: 8#ABC book$abecednik
9#abecedary$abecednik
6. When a single English term has two or more equivalent meanings in your language,
separate the synonymous terms by a comma (,).
e.g.: 2252#librarian$knjižničar, bibliotekar
7. When an English term has two or more equivalents in your language which are
distinctly different in their meaning, separate them by a semicolon (;).
e.g.: 1941#heading$geslo; značnica
1271#copy$izvod; kopija
8. Parts of speech: in the course of the preparation of the dictionary some additional
grammatical information will be attributed to the entries; you might have noticed that
some of the verbs already have the distinctive designation ("v" or "(to)"). According to
the specific grammatical needs of your language please use the appropriate qualifiers in
parentheses to mark the parts of speech and other signifficant properties:
(v) - verb
(f) - feminine noun
(m) - masculine noun
(pl) - plural noun
(n) - neuter noun
(a) - adjective
(ad) - adverb
e.g.: 1941#heading$geslo (n); značnica (f)
2252#librarian$knjižničar (m), bibliotekar (m)
1271#copy$izvod (m); kopija (f)
1272#copy (v)$kopirati (v)
If two qualifiers are used, enter both of them with no separator in between:
e.g.: 1634#ephemerides$efemeride (f)(pl)
1381#data$podatki (m)(pl)
If some steady pairs occur as shown above, observe a constant order of appearance
(the more frequent designation first followed by the less frequent).
9. If there is a need for the use of further grammatical indicators in your language,
use them freely but observing a consistency according to the usage in your dictionaries.
You can use additional designations if appropriate in your language; put them in
parentheses and supply the key to the abbreviations.
10. Many of the languages involved are inflectional ones, inflections indicating
important grammatical features of the dictionary entries such as number, person, case,
mood, or tense. The scope of the dictionary is library terminology and translation of
terms, not linguistic information, so avoid such supplementary grammatical information
if possible to avoid cumbersome and complicated expressions.
December 1998
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ivan.kanic@nuk.uni-lj.si
Created December 15, 1998 - Last update February 3, 1999
