Optimalisering van gratis elektroniese/aanlyn hulpbronne vir woordeboek-samestelling — 'n drietalige woordeboekeksperiment

Abstract

Optimization of Free Online/Electronic Resources for Dictionary Compilation — A Trilingual Dictionary Experiment. The availability of multilingual dictionaries is crucial, not only for direct target users, but also for indirect target users, especially in the case of languages with scarce resources such as Venda. This article explores the optimal use of free electronic/online resources for compiling a trilingual e-dictionary for Venda, English and Afri­kaans. Our approach is based on an experiment in which the compilation process was automated as far as possible to achieve savings in terms of time and manpower. English is used as a bridge for the translation between the source language, Venda, and the target language, Afrikaans. The general finding is that certain limitations can be expected in such a semi-automated process that requires a certain amount of human intervention. Although the composite e-dictionary cannot be considered a final product, the dictionary compilation program Lexonomy, which has been used suc­cessfully in this study due to its adaptability and easy layout, provides the opportunity for human input to make the necessary adaptations in a user-friendly manner. The proposed concept is useful for creating multilingual online dictionaries, compiled using available online or electronic resources. The resulting trilingual dictionary is available online as proof of concept on which fur­ther work can build. The fact that the database underlying the dictionary is available in a machine-readable format, namely XML, is important for indirect target users for reuse to develop electronic resources, especially for resource-scarce languages. Keywords: dictionary compilation, Venda–English–Afrikaans, tri­lingual dictionary, electronic/online resources, machine translation systems, lexonomy, corpus search, target users