Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

one-one lexical mapping; the second, a translation of an English one-many lexical
mapping into a French one-many lexical mapping. However, both equations can be
regarded as one-one mappings of a single ‘translation unit’ of English onto a single
French translation equivalent.
Other possible mappings of source-language translation units onto target-language
translation equivalents are:
Mapping E.t.u. F.t.e.
one-many jacket (garment) (of woman’s suit) jaquette;
(of man’s suit)
many-one bucket;
veston
seau
many-many
pail
furze; gênet(s) épineux;
gorse ajonc(s)
E.t.u.: English translation unit(s)
F.t.e.: French translation equivalent(s)
A-Z 399
In these last three cases, the translation units have been lexical units (of English), and
their translated explanations have been translation equivalents (of French)—that is,
lexical units, too. But, as we have seen, neither translation units nor their translated
explanations need be lexical units. All permutations and combinations occur in bilingual
dictionaries: lexical unit—lexical unit (penicillin:pénicilline); lexical unit—non-lexical
unit (Scotch egg:æuf dur enrobé etc.); non-lexical unit—lexical unit (rural policeman:
garde champêtre); non-lexical unit—non-lexical unit (beat a drum: battre du tambour).
Unfortunately, most bilingual dictionaries do not distinguish consistently between those
translation units and translated explanations that are lexical units and those that are not.
The example ‘jacket (garment)’ above shows that when bilingual dictionaries deal
with a single morphemic representation of more than one lexical unit (e.g. jacket noun 1:
‘garment x’ 2: ‘skin of baked potato’…), they more and more use various devices to
show which lexical unit they are translating, and the example ‘(of woman’s suit) jaquette’
shows that they use similar devices to distinguish the domains of their translations. Such
orientating devices can utilize any of the types of lexically relevant information listed on
pages 294–5.
Whatever explanatory technique or techniques they use, dictionaries must order their
explanations when a single article treats of more than one lexical unit and therefore
requires more than one explanation. Such lexical units, or ‘senses’, may be ordered
historically, by perceived frequency, by markedness (unmarked before diasystematically
marked) or semantically (‘basic’ before ‘derived’, ‘literal’ before ‘figurative’). However,
semantic ordering may coexist with any of the other ordering principles, in which case
semantically related senses are grouped together, and each such ‘sense group’ is placed
according to its age, its frequency, or its markedness. The ordering of senses may or may
not follow the same principles as the ordering of homologues in the macrostructure. Thus