Zur Lesartbestimmung in Übersetzungswörterbüchern

Abstract

While it is well known that the determination of meanings and submeanings is a difficult task not at last because of its dependence on the concept of meaning itself, the notion of translation dictionary would appear to be evident in themselves. At all events, in the secondary literature, providing support in the translation process is widely considered to be in a generic way a main function of bilingual dictionaries. Consequently, in their introductions the target language equivalents are often defined as “translations”, even though they are usually based on a concept of equivalence that is applied to lexicologically determined lexemes. However, if one refers to the translation-related concept of equivalence, methodical problems arise at a lexicographical level, notably as far as the determination and differentiation of meanings and submeanings are concerned. Examples of these problems are discussed on the basis of a case study.