The creation of target language equivalents in bilingual dictionaries have always been a challenge to both lexicographers and terminologists. Lexicographers, terminologists, subject specialists and linguists face a challenging task of supplying term equivalents for foreign international languages. The lack of a sufficient technical vocabulary in the African languages poses challenges to lexicographers and terminologists when supplying technical equivalents. They often regard transliteration as the quickest lexicographical and terminological procedure without taking the practical demands of users into account. This impedes the optimal retrieval of semantic information by the target users of dictionaries. This article discusses possible reasons why transliteration should not be regarded as the first but the last resort in lexicography and terminology. It proposes different lexicographical and terminological procedures lexicographers and terminologists can use to supply accurate and appropriate translation equivalents without making excessive use of transliteration. In this way a scientific language will develop which could assist users to communicate successfully in the mother tongue.
Dictionaries have in the past used a word-based approach in which sublexical and multilexical items were not regarded as lemmata. Metalexicography as the theoretical component of lexicography requires that sublexical and multilexical items be lemmatized and treated as independent lemmata in the macrostructure of dictionaries. One of the greater challenges for compiling a better and user-oriented Northern Sotho monolingual dictionary is to treat sublexical and multilexical items as macrostructural elements. Treating these items, the lexicographer faces quite a number of challenges. This article proposes possible ways in which sublexical and multilexical elements could be successfully treated in a Northern Sotho monolingual dictionary. Taking stock of these challenges, the writer comes with suggestions that would assist lexicographers in the compilation of a user-friendly, lexicon-based monolingual dictionary that would lead users to successful information retrieval.
Keywords
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.