In the design of the specialised software for production of bilingual word indices
to Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel, we faced two major challenges. One, common
to such texts, is the lexico-grammatical asymmetry between the language of the source
and that of the target of the translation. The other, specific to the current work, has
to do with the sources and editions of the texts in both languages. At the beginning of
this article, we briefly present the key circumstances that, on the one hand, define the
lexicographical concept of the word indices, and on the other hand, further shape the
technological solutions for their production. Here we focus on the functionalities of
the proposed solution and how they fit into the overall dictionary development process.
The process features 8 steps, three of which are automated with purpose-built software,
namely: preparation for parallelisation and lemmatisation, integration of intermediate
results, and index generation. We provide specific examples to illustrate solutions to
lexicographic problems that are common to bilingual dictionaries (e.g., linguistic
asymmetry between source and target texts) or specific to the work (e.g., variability in
sources). The used approach allows the software tools to be used for the production of
other bilingual dictionaries after a corresponding configuration.