EUROPEAN ASSOCIATION FOR LEXICOGRAPHY
Editor: Paul Bogaards. p.bogaards@let.leidenuniv.nl
This quarterly Newsletter is intended to include not only official announcements but also news about EURALEX members, their publications, projects, and (it is hoped) their opinions, and news about other lexicographical organizations. Please try to support this by sending newsletter contributions to Paul Bogaards at the email address above. The deadlines are as follows: 1 February for the March issue, 1 May for the June issue, 1 August for the September issue, and 1 November for the December issue.
The URL of the EURALEX web site is www.euralex.org
Obituaries
Catherine Schwarz (1933 - 2005)
Catherine Schwarz, former Managing Editor of Chambers dictionaries, died on 22 December 2005. She was on the staff at Chambers more or less continuously from 1953 to 1993, working initially on encyclopaedic reference books (as well as the last years of the Chambers Journal, begun by the firm’s founders William and Robert Chambers in 1832), and latterly on the monolingual English dictionaries for which the company is known. After retirement, she remained a valued consultant and contributor, always willing to share her extensive knowledge of the company’s history and publications, and particularly the world of crosswords and Scrabble.
With Catherine’s passing, 80 years of her family’s involvement with Chambers has come to an end. Her father, Tom Collocott, was himself an editor and later Managing Director, and her mother Elma joined the company in the early 1920s as a secretary.
Although nurtured in the old school of dictionary publishing, Catherine was no conservative and was responsible for overhauling much of the more old-fashioned defining style and metalanguage of The Chambers Dictionary (she worked on six editions of the dictionary in her career), doing much to make it a modern book whilst preserving its character and humour. In the latter respect she was very aware that she was following in the footsteps of such notable previous editor-in-chiefs as William Geddie and Agnes ‘Nancy’ Macdonald. Fully aware of the idiosyncrasies of the dictionary, she also knew that these contributed to its distinctiveness and should not be sacrificed without good reason.
She was a staunch supporter of EURALEX and enjoyed attending the congresses, mixing with the many friends she had made during a life in lexicography. Colleagues from Chambers and EURALEX members will remember in particular Catherine’s mischievous – but warm – sense of humour and a fondness for the wry aside. She had a great sense of fun, was dedicated to her work, and would give short shrift to any “paraffle*”.
*paraffle or parafle (Scot) n a pretentious display; a fuss [Cf paraph]
The Chambers Dictionary, 2003
Patrick White
Richards Wakely (1942 – 2005)
English-French scholarship has lost a passionate and determined champion with the passing of Richard Wakely in June 2005. He had the lexicographer's determination to get things right (not almost right, or as good as right, or the-best-we-can-do right), and the knowledge of both languages and cultures to make sure it happened. But this lexicographic skill was nicely counterbalanced by his literary gifts, and his witty haikus were a delight.
A Senior Lecturer in French at the University of Edinburgh, Richard was one of three main contributors to Larousse’s Dictionnaire de l'anglais contemporain. His appetite for lexicography thus whetted, in the early 1990s he moved on to the preparation of the Oxford – Hachette French Dictionary, and we worked together to write usage notes for lexical sets (such as days of the week, musical instruments, etc.), and to prepare models for letters, small ads and cvs, to be included as a non-alphabetical section within the dictionary itself. Working with him was a constant pleasure. He was competent, knowledgeable and highly cultured. The inevitable perplexities of lexicography could test his patience, but he would always manage to find an elegant way round them. His French was splendid, and he seemed to know more about the history and structures of French than any of us.
Working for the OHFD gave him a taste for the company of lexicographers, and he began to attend EURALEX conferences, where his unassuming ways and good-humoured conversation soon endeared him to colleagues world-wide. We have lost a valued scholar and a dear friend. Our deepest sympathy goes to his wife and his children. He is sorely missed.
Henri Béjoint and Sue Atkins
EURALEX General Meeting 2006
The next General Meeting of EURALEX will take place during our 12th Congress in Torino/Turin, 6-9 September 2006. This meeting is open to all members of EURALEX. In order to prepare this meeting, members are invited to send items of general interest which they would like to discuss at the meeting to the Secretary (see address below), who will then include them in the agenda.
Members are also reminded that the General Meeting will elect the Officers and other members of the Executive Board. According to EURALEX Constitution ‘proposals and nominations should be made and seconded by different individuals’. All individual members are eligible for nomination and election.
Rosamund Moon
EURALEX Secretary-Treasurer
Department of English
University of Birmingham
Birmingham B15 2TT
Great Britain
Email: R.E.Moon@bham.ac.uk
2006 Laurence Urdang Award
Three projects will receive grants for the 2005 Laurence Urdang Award:
· Le dictionnaire général bilingue italien-français / français-italien. Genèse, évolution, bilan et perspective. Partial financing of publication. Valéria Zotti, Bari, Italie
· A digital dictionary of Catalan derivational affixes. Dictionary creation. Janet DeCesaris and Elisenda Bernal, Barcelona, Spain
These give an insight into the variety of projects that can be considered for this award. Reports on earlier awards may be consulted on the EURALEX Website.
For 2006, Laurence Urdang is continuing his very generous award for unpaid lexicographical work. Applications for the 2006 Award are welcome on all aspects of lexicography.
The Laurence Urdang Award, which is funded by Laurence Urdang and administered by EURALEX helps to support unpaid lexicographical work of any type, including study. The amount available is GBP £1500 sterling, and an individual award may vary in size from GBP £205 to the full amount. Applications must be received by 30th October 2006. Results will be announced by early 2007, and awards will be presented as soon as possible after notification of the results.
Applications should take the form of:
1. a letter specifying the amount applied for;
2. a statement giving full details of the purpose to which the funds would be put, and an indication of expected tangible results (e.g. publications);
3. a curriculum vitae including qualifications, details of previous lexicographical or related work, and publications;
4. one professional or academic reference;
5. details of funding received or applied for in relation to the project for which the Laurence Urdang Award is being sought.
Four copies of the entire application should be sent to:
2006 Laurence Urdang Award,
EURALEX Assistant Secretary-Treasurer Geoffrey Williams,
Université de Bretagne Sud
U.F.R. Lettres et Sciences Humaines
4, rue Jean Zay
B.P. 92116
56321 LORIENT Cedex
France
In addition an electronic version (Word or RTF) should be sent to the following address:
Email: geoffrey.williams@univ-ubs.fr. If no acknowledgement is received within a reasonable period, candidates are asked to contact the EURALEX Assistant Secretary-Treasurer at the above address.
The Selection Panel consists of the EURALEX President, and two past presidents. The Award is open to EURALEX members only, but applications will be accepted from people who have applied for EURALEX membership and are awaiting confirmation of this. If you wish to join EURALEX please write to: Ms Paula Thomson, EURALEX Society Liaison, OUP Journals, Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Fax: +44 1 865 267 485. Email: thomsonp@oup.co.uk.
Bibliography on idioms and collocations
A large bibliography of more than 4,200 publications on idioms and
collocations has been compiled by the members of the Wolfgang Paul research
group at the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. The bibliography can be
accessed at
http://kollokationen.bbaw.de/bib/index_en.html. The bibliography is still growing and
colleagues are invited to submit additional entries for inclusion.
Lexicom tours the world
The Lexicography MasterClass (Sue Atkins, Adam Kilgarriff, Michael Rundell) have been running their annual Lexicom workshop for six years now. It is a one-week workshop in lexicography and lexical computing, with both theoretical components and hands-on sessions, and now has around two hundred graduates dotted round the dictionary-publishers, universities, translation bureaux and dotcoms of the world.
After starting in Brighton, UK, the event has toured, with Copenhagen in 2004, Brno (Czech Republic) in 2005 and Opatija on the Croatian coast this summer. These are all Europe, and hard to access from other parts of the world, and in response, this December there will be a first Lexicom-Asia, in Hong Kong. An event in the USA is planned for June 2007.
For details and pre-registration visit http://www.lexmasterclass.com
Forthcoming events
2006
July
3–6, University of Venda for Science and Technology, Thohoyandou, South Africa: 11th International AFRILEX Conference, ‘The user perspective in lexicography’. Keynote Speakers: Prof. Wlodzimierz Sobkowiak (Poland) and Prof. Herbert Chimhundu (Zimbabwe). Information: Mr. S.L. Tshikota, Editor-in-Chief of the Tshivenda National Lexicography Unit, Private Bag X5050, Thohoyandou 0950, South Africa. E-mail: stshikota@yahoo.com. Tel. & Fax: +27 (0)15 962 8327. Website: http://www.up.ac.za/academic/libarts/afrilang/homelex.html
September
6-9 , Turin, Italy: 12th International EURALEX conference. Information: Professor Carla Marello, Università di Torino. E-mail: marello@cisi.unito.it
22 – 26, Santiago de Cuba : Tenth International Symposium on Social Communication. Information:
Dr. Leonel Ruiz Miyares, Centro de Linguistica Aplicada, Calle 8 Nr. 206 entre
7 y 9, Vista Alegre, Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. C.P. 90400, Telefonos:
53-22-642760, 53-22-656141, Correo Electronico: leonel@lingapli.ciges.inf.cu.
http://www.santiago.cu/hosting/linguistica/sitio-cla/ingles/
http://www.santiago.cu/hosting/linguistica/sitio-cla/espanol/