Från målspråk till källspråk - Vaasan yliopisto

ACTA WASAENSIA 319
The first development took place with the shift from the dictionaries of Schorederus (1637)
and Florinus (1708) with Finnish as their target language to Juslenius (1745) where it
becomes the source language. The second stage is the development of Finnish as a source
language in Ganander’s multilingual dictionary (1787) to a bilingual dictionary through
Renvall’s dictionary (1826). The third and fourth stages consist of the division of descriptive
bilingual dictionaries into combined reception and production dictionaries for Swedish
(1908) and a monolingual normative Finnish dictionary (1951-61). The fifth development
comes when the normative Finnish dictionary provides the lexicographical basis for a
bilingual production dictionary (1997). The sixth transition consists of the electronic
dictionaries in which the development is towards more integrated reception and production
dictionaries (1998).
Step by step the bilingual Finnish-Swedish dictionaries were linked to the normative
monolingual Finnish dictionaries. This normative approach was closely linked to the
linguistic codification of Finnish that was taking place until the 1960s.
Distinctions between regional varieties of Swedish (Swedish Swedish and Finland Swedish)
begin to appear in the lexicographical material during the 20 th century. In Finnish the
corresponding lexicographical distinctions (Finland Finnish and Swedish Finnish) are not
embodied in dictionaries until the end of the 1990s.
The last decade of the 20 th century is characterised by a development in which electronic
dictionaries take pride of place. I have been able to identify two main trends in this
development – one which is based on established lexicographical traditions and one that
attempts to find new, rapid, automated approaches to lexicography and the use of dictionaries.
Development in the established lexicographic tradition is towards combining reception and
production dictionaries. In the lexicographic approaches developed in various computer
companies, great faith seems to be placed at the moment in automatic translation, which from
the point of view of traditional lexicography is a retrogressive return to the use of dictionaries
as word lists to produce word-for-word renderings. Internet subscriptions would appear to be
the most recent channel of distribution for dictionaries.
The emergence of electronic dictionaries can, however, involve changes in the structure of
dictionaries enabling the combination of production and reception dictionaries so that the
target group can be monolingual to an even greater extent.