[afrilex] Re: [DSNA] FW: Macmillan's recent announcement
- From: Metaglossia <charlestiayon@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: slandau1755@xxxxxxxxxxx, DSNA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2012 09:19:08 +0100
Macmillan's move was somewhat predictable. That is definitely the way forward
in 21st century lexicography.
Full digitisation however comes with the assumption that the entire
English-speaking world has comparable access to electronic material.... Which
is far from true.
Charles Tiayon
on mobile app
Sidney Landau <slandau1755@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>There is no question that digitization in dictionaries describes the
>future, but the question I have is this: Though electronic storage
>allows, as we are endlessly reminded, continuous updating, what is
>the financial incentive of dictionary publishers to fund such
>updating continuously in a robust way? In print, the incentive was
>selling a new edition of thousands of books. So I remain a bit
>skeptical that the new world of electronic dictionaries will, in the
>end, result in better dictionaries.
>
>Sidney Landau
>On Nov 6, 2012, at 11:07 AM, Gilles-Maurice de Schryver wrote:
>
>> To round off this thread, from Michael Rundell ...
>>
>> From: Michael Rundell [mailto:michael.rundell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
>> Behalf Of
>> Michael Rundell
>> Sent: dinsdag 6 november 2012 16:32
>> To: euralex@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Cc: braasch@xxxxxxxxx; Simon Krek Gmail; Gilles-Maurice de
>> Schryver; Bullon,
>> Stephen
>> Subject: Macmillan's recent announcement
>>
>> I thought it was time I waded into this debate. Thanks to everyone
>> who has
>> contributed so many interesting and pertinent points. Much of what
>> I have to
>> say on the subject has already been said more eloquently by people
>> like
>> Gilles-Maurice de Schryver, Simon Krek, and Anna Braasch, and my
>> colleague
>> Stephen Bullon, but i'll put my two cents in anyway.
>>
>> I think the arguments against abandoning print fall into two main
>> categories, practical and cultural/emotional.
>>
>> The practical argument is that not everyone in the world enjoys
>> good (or
>> even any) web connectivity. True (though becoming less true all the
>> time).
>> As any publisher would, Macmillan took soundings from its sales people
>> worldwide to gauge future demand for print dictionaries (which of
>> course
>> varies wildly from place to place). The current, final print run takes
>> account of these forecasts, and means we'll be able to satisfy that
>> demand
>> for some time to come. Another model (which we have already applied
>> in a few
>> cases) is that a local publishing partner can produce locally-printed
>> versions of our dictionaries under licence: an elegant and efficient
>> approach for which there may continue to be some demand over the
>> next few
>> years. But the process of digitization is unstoppable - surely we all
>> believe that? - and we see these measures as contingencies, to
>> respond to a
>> transitional situation. (An aside: I seem to remember Sarah
>> Ogilvie, in a
>> plenary on endangered languages at Euralex 2010, mentioning that in
>> remote
>> areas of Western Australia, aboriginal people took advantage of the
>> satellite technology installed by mining companies there, and all
>> had mobile
>> phones with bilingual dictionaries on them. So even thousands of
>> miles from
>> big cities, digital dictionaries are by no means 'exotic'.)
>>
>> This doesn't mean paper dictionaries will disappear any time soon:
>> rather
>> that, like vinyl LPs (as we used to call them) they will be more of
>> a niche.
>> There are many languages in the world that haven't yet benefited
>> from the
>> last big lexicographic revolution - the 'corpus revolution' that
>> began in
>> the 1980s - and publishers like Ilan Kernerman have provided excellent
>> resources for what we (reluctantly) refer to as 'smaller'
>> languages. But
>> Macmillan produces dictionaries of English, and that most
>> definitely is not
>> a niche.
>>
>> The second argument, roughly, is that we all like delving into
>> physical
>> books, and printed dictionaries offer serendipitous discoveries as
>> we idly
>> browse them. Well, up to a point. But as Anna put it, 'most people
>> are not
>> lexicographers or lovers of words, for them a dictionary is just a
>> tool'.
>> The primary market for Macmillan's pedagogical dictionaries
>> consists either
>> of learners of English or people whose first language isn't English
>> but who
>> need to use English in their professional or academic lives (an
>> enormous
>> group). This cohort is predominantly young, and many are digital
>> natives.
>> The odds of a 19-year-old Korean undergraduate taking a paper
>> dictionary
>> down from a shelf in order to resolve a reference query are, like
>> it or not,
>> vanishingly long, and getting longer. Of course, I too appreciate
>> the joys
>> of browsing a dictionary, but then I am (a) in my sixties and (b) a
>> lexicographer.
>>
>> Besides, as Simon noted, there are plenty of browsing opportunities in
>> electronic reference materials. In Macmillan's online dictionary
>> you can (a)
>> click on any word in a definition or example sentence and go
>> straight to the
>> entry for that word; (b) click on the 'T' thesaurus button at any
>> word,
>> phrase or word sense and have access to relevant thesaurus data;
>> (c) scroll
>> down the pane to the right of the entry showing 'Related
>> definitions' (thus
>> at the noun 'box' you could also, instantly, look up entries such
>> as box in,
>> inbox, box room, box someone's ears, or think outside the box).
>>
>> There are winners and losers, upsides and downsides, whenever
>> things change.
>> But do we want to be like those people who wrote angry letters to
>> the Times
>> when motorized transport first came to London at the beginning of
>> the last
>> century, asking about the future employment prospects for people
>> who made
>> their living by clearing the horse manure from the streets (I am
>> not making
>> this up). As far as Macmillan is concerned, better to embrace a
>> future that
>> will come anyway, than to hang grimly on to a way of doing things
>> whose time
>> is passing. And the advantages of digital over paper are so great,
>> and the
>> opportunities this medium offers are only beginning to be exploited.
>>
>> And by the way, how would today's exchange of views have worked if
>> we'd all
>> stuck to quill pens and the postal service?
>>
>> Michael Rundell
>>
>> Editor-in-Chief
>>
>> Macmillan Dictionaries
>>
>> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
>>
>> __._,_.___
>> Reply via web post Reply to
>> sender Reply to group
>> Start a New Topic Messages in this topic (1)
>> RECENT ACTIVITY:
>> Visit Your Group
>> For more information about the DSNA: http://www.dictionarysociety.com
>> Post message: DSNA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> Unsubscribe: DSNA-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> ******** REMEMBER: "REPLY" REPLIES TO THE ENTIRE LIST. ********
>> Switch to: Text-Only, Daily Digest â Unsubscribe â Terms of Use â
>> Send us Feedback
>> .
>>
>> __,_._,___
>
Other related posts:
