HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

REVIEWSUKRAINIAN-ENGLISH/ENGLISH-UKRAINIAN DICTIONARY.By Leonid Hrabovsky. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1991. 432 pp.$8.95 paper.Leonid Hrabovsky and Hippocrene Books are to be commended for undertaking thetask of producing a usable, concise, and practical Ukrainian-English/English-Ukrainian Dictionary. It is much needed. The result of their undertaking is, unfortunately,completely unsatisfactory. Mr. Hrabovsky's professional and intellectualendeavors are listed in the front matter of the dictionary; none of them indicate specialtraining for such an undertaking, and the dictionary shows it. The appearance ofthis dictionary should serve as a wakeup call for Ukrainian-language specialists:someone with proper training should have undertaken this much-needed project.First, about the dictionary. The major reason for its unsatisfactory nature is theseemingly arbitrary manner in which lexical items have been selected for inclusion.In the "Foreword" (which an English-language editor at Hippocrene should havecleaned up but didn't) Hrabovsky does not state an underlying principle by whichwords were selected. The only hint as to such a principle is the statement: "It [thedictionary] is a useful tool for travelers, business people, and students." If gearedtoward travelers, then the absence of words like "bill," "bus," "hotel," "taxi," and"toilet" might prove disconcerting, although some comfort might be afforded by thepresence of "bikini," "harem," "tatter," and "tingle." In the realm of business, theabsence of words like "computer," "contract," "factory," and "plan" are telling;more problematic here—and a general problem throughout—is the systematicfailure to provide synonyms in lexical entries to distinguish the different meaningsfor a word, or at least to differentiate them numerically. For example, the glosses for"plant" are "n рослина, саджанець, устаткування," with no differentiationbetween the first two words and the third; "завод" and "фабрика," which rightlybelong to the entry, even in a smaller dictionary, are missing. The lack of furtherclarification is seen in the gloss of "fan" as "фанат." Even Ukrainian-Americansaccustomed to "уболівальник" or "болільник" might think twice about this one.The consequences for a businessman or woman in Ukraine using this dictionary toset up a plant to manufacture fans might be absurd.There is little that this dictionary can offer students. None of the verbs includesconjugated forms to orient students as to verb types. Even a brief guide to Ukrainiangrammar is missing. The pronunciational guides are problematic, as is the choice ofneologisms versus more conventional terms. The compiler states in the forewordthat he has chosen "literary norms of the contemporary Ukrainian language of thecentral region," which is understandable, but given the aggressive move that Lvivhas taken to stimulate student exchanges in the United States, any serious dictionarygeared toward American students should make an attempt to address the lexicaldifferences between Lviv/Galician Ukrainian and Kiev/Central-Dnieper Ukrainian.