Lázár, A. P., & Varga, Gy. (2000). Angol-magyar kéziszótár. Budapest: Aquila Kiadó.
Varga, Gy., & Lázár, A. P. (2000). Magyar-angol kéziszótár. Budapest: Aquila Kiadó. 
 

Introduction

The greatest satisfaction that a person with a critical mind can derive is from reading dictionaries. It is so easy to spot omissions or inaccuracies and feel superior. All too easy, indeed, no dictionary can satisfy the many conflicting requirements of dictionary writing at the same time. No dictionary can be perfect.

Aware of the difficulties of dictionary writing, then, I shall try to resist the temptation to be uncritically critical. I will try to focus on the lexicographic approach followed by the authors and examine how the principles they set down worked out in practice, and see what relevance their experience has for lexicography in general. 

The underlying principles

The authors claim that this new dictionary is a bilingual desk dictionary of general language for general purposes for Hungarian users, based mostly on electronic sources and made user-friendly by deliberately cutting down on the number of symbols used. Put briefly, their most important objectives are to provide the Hungarian user with the most important words of this day and age and to make that information easy to access.

A bilingual dictionary

Some lexicographers have come to the conclusion that the best kind of dictionary would be one which combines the features of the monolingual and the bilingual dictionary, giving a meaning definition in either L1 or L2 plus translation equivalents. This idea has been implemented to some extent in Thompson's dictionary (1991) and in the bridge dictionaries (cf. Baker & Kaplan, 1994), where some words have translation equivalents while other words are explained by translating the definitions in the monolingual dictionary into the L1.

The Angol-magyar kéziszótár (AMK) and Magyar-angol kéziszótár (MAK) remain safely in the tradition of bilingual dictionaries: in that they do not combine the monolingual and the bilingual dictionary, taking the good with the bad, offering the advantages of a good bilingual dictionary together with the potential limitations of such dictionaries. 

Hungarocentrism

The authors lay stress on the fact that these bilingual dictionaries have been specially designed for Hungarians. In general I find that these dictionaries do indeed cater for the Hungarian public,which is apparent both in their coverage and certain features of the arrangement of the material. 

A novel feature of both AMK and MAK, following from the principle of Hungarocentrism is that it warns the dictionary user about false cognates. For example,

aktuális timely, topical, current ezmár 
nem aktuális it's no longer relevant, it's
out of date i NEM actual[igazi:] live

It is a pity that the authors did not find space for some geographical names that have a different form in Hungarian (Lake Constance, Bohemia, Venice, Naples, etc).

A desk dictionary of general language for general-purposes: coverage and selection

The authors state that this is a dictionary of everyday language, containing the words of general language including some fields that have special significance in 21st century Hungary, such as information technology, business life, economics and politics. I can find no fault with this approach: indeed, most of the words that (I think) belong to the vocabulary of an educated (Hungarian) speaker in Hungary are there. 

One of the most attractive features of these new dictionaries is indeed their coverage. Every page contains a number of very fresh words, words that we did not know or did not use ten years ago, words that reflect Hungary's period of transition in the past decade, the spread of globalism and political correctness. These dictionaries `feel' modern because the proportion of words related to the present day is very high. Indeed, one could write a cultural history of our times based on even a random selection from AMK (incidentally, these words were not included in the first edition of Országh and Magay (1998):

ableism, access broker, access code, achievement award, acid freak, acquaintance rape, action movie, action packed, advance tax payment, adventure game, advertising ethics, Afro look, hidden agenda, air freshener, airport fiction - and the list can be continued at will.

And some examples from MAK:

dögkút, fekvõrendõr, kábítószerkeresõ kutya, kakaós csiga, kalózkazetta, kaparós sorsjegy, karhatalmista, papírpelenka, taposóakna, kegyes halál, földönkívüli, etc.

Of course, it is very easy to find in any dictionary words that are not there and it is not fair to list words that you could not find in a desk dictionary - it just cannot contain all the words of a language. It has to be selective. Yet I cannot resist listing a few words and phrases that I think might have been included:

aid and abet, anaerobic (aerobic is there), ammonium, CBI, news roundup, exam nerves (AMK); önkényes lakásfoglaló, beszól, olyanja van, diszkópatkány, izomagyú, õrzõ-védõ, alibi futball, csalják a futballt, lopja a távolságot, bõdületes kapufa, (MAK) etc.

There is a fair number of slang terms in both dictionaries (which always make dictionaries an interesting read). The number of words meaning homosexual seems to be high (arse bandit, nance, etc), and the authors use the pejorative term buzi very freely, which does not seem to be politically correct.

Coverage does not mean only the number of words, but also the number of meanings with polysemous words. Here a desk dictionary, due to limited space, is at a disadvantage. Thus, for example, I missed the following meanings in AMK: alien - földönkívüli (E.T.); disqualification - the sense disqualification from driving and niche in its ecological meaning. 

Since some technical vocabulary is part of everyday language, the educated reader will need some technical terms and phrases, too. AMK and MAK seem to provide good coverage of a few privileged domains, such as information technology and business life, but of course cannot cover all the various fields of science and technology. AMK includes the engineering terms camshaft, crankshaft and flywheel, but not pto-shaft and hydraulic ram. Apparently, the former are part of everyday vocabulary and the latter not. 

The number of words the reviewer thinks could have been omitted is few. Based on my experience and my intuition, I would have omitted necklace killing and agent provocateur (AMK) or gimnasztyorka (MAK), since I think these words are of limited currency. Of course there are no objective criteria that could tell us when a word has lost its currency: years ago we used to hear a lot about non-aligned countries, while today they are practically never referred to. Should the dictionary still have it? Ultimately, coverage has to be judged on the basis of what texts the supposed users are supposed to read and for what supposed purposes, and part of the answer will always be based on intuition. I find that in most cases the authors' intuitions agree with mine.

Explaining meanings

Interlingual relationships between words are variable. According to Snell-Hornby (1988/1995) they can be classified in the following way:
 
 

1. Terminology/nomenclature	oxygen
2. Internationally known items and sets	Saturday, typewriter
3. Concrete objects, basic activities, stative adjectives	chair, cook, technical
4. Words expressing perception and  evaluation,often linked to sociocultural norms	billow, foreboding,gleam, bleak, nag
5. Culture-bound elements	haggis, wicket, drugstore

In the following I shall refer to these relationships as Category 1, 2 and so forth. Usually there is one-to-one equivalence in terminology and nomenclature, and a reasonable degree of equivalence with internationally known items and sets. Such words can easily be handled in bilingual dictionaries. The degree of correspondence decreases from partial overlap to zero as we move down the scale, with some culturally bound terms having no equivalent at all in the target language. Such words are better explained in defining dictionaries. Snell-Hornby recommends a mixed-type dictionary, where the words in Categories 1 (and perhaps 2) are given translation equivalents while words in Categories 3 to 5 are presented in contrastive semantic fields. 

The words in categories 3 to 5 often have to be explained rather that matched with an equivalent in the target language. Most of the explanations in AMK are accurate and easy to understand. In several cases the equivalents or explanations given are more accurate or easier to understand than in Angol magyar szótár (AMSZ) (Országh & Magay, 1998):
 
 

aficionado	AMK: bikaviadalrajongó; AMSZ: sportkedvelõ
age of consent	AMK: nagykorúság (szexuális kapcsolathoz, házassághoz), AMSZ:(jog) törvényes kor (leányé);
alphabet soup	AMK: 1 betûtésztás leves 2 betûszókkal tele beszéd stb.; AMSZ betûleves (?)
accuracy jump	AMK: célbaugrás; AMSZ: ejtõernyõs ugrás (folyamat)
agony aunt	AMK: "okos Kata", újság tanácsadó rovatának  szerkesztõje  AMSZ: személyi rovatvezetõ, levelezõ (aki az olvasók  személyes jellegû leveleire válaszol, tanácsot ad)

One inherent difficulty in dictionary writing is how to explain terms that lack an exact translation equivalent. Brevity and accuracy pull in opposite directions, and sometimes the result is an awkward-sounding phrase, such as acquaintance rape - áldozat ismerõse általi szexuális erõszak or near miss -valami, ami pontosan nem talál, valamilyen hatása mégis van. It must be added, however, that it is easier to spot such circumlocutions than to find an explanation that sounds better and is both accurate and short. 

In explaining meanings of words the authors try to give simple, well-chosen equivalents to represent the individual meanings and through them to give some sort of idea of the prototype meaning. This effort seems to be more or less successful. With categories 1 and 2 equivalents do work, from category 3 on it becomes more difficult and with category 5 it is well-nigh impossible, so the authors often give definitions or explanations rather than equivalents. However, they deliberately refrain from using formal indicators such as brackets to set off equivalents from explanatory phrases or definitions. This might be accounted for by their aim to use as few symbols as possible so as not to confuse the unsophisticated user, but the same unsophisticated reader might be led to think that the explanatory phrase/clause is the equivalent.

The authors seem to have a penchant for informal style. The frequent use of ciki(s) is symptomatic (e.g. naff - ciki(s), ízléstelen). Where AMSZ has csömörig, undorodásig for ad nauseam AMK has orrvérzésig. This feature contributes to the feeling of freshness, but sometimes leads to inaccuracy: absenteeism is munkahelyi lógás in AMK. The Hungarian word is stylistically marked, although the English term does not seem to be (other dictionaries use no style label for absenteeism). The authors also seem sensitive to the very latest neologisms, even oversensitive. One wonders whether Clintonomics is going to develop into a word in its own right or wither away with Reaganomics?

Arrangement of material

Most of the new features of these dictionaries are related to the authors’ endeavour to be user friendly. Common sense, simple solutions take precedence of linguistic or lexicographic pedantry, which I wholeheartedly support. There is a minimum of symbols, cross-references and the dictionaries lack the usual heavy artillery of lexicography. The entries are less complicated and are easier to penetrate, the numbering is less chaotic than in some traditional dictionaries, there is instant pronunciation, spelling and grammar help given in the running footer, etc.

There are separate entries for the same words as different parts of speech with grey shading to assist in finding them. The arrangement of phrasal verbs shows common sense, and gives grammatical help by indicating the place of the object: cf. figure on smth  versus figure smth out. Compounds, including adjective/noun compounds like small hours  are placed in separate entries. This feature contributes a lot to user-friendliness. On the other hand, in dictionary writing you always have to take the good with the bad. Having separate entries for compounds and some phrases is good; at the same time, increasing the amount of monosemous items (compounds and phrases usually have single meanings) may deepen some users’ conviction that indeed there is one-to-one correspondence between the words of one language and another. 

Abbreviations are incorporated in the body of the dictionary (a feature supporting user-friendliness) and country and nationality names and the corresponding adjectives are listed at the end (a feature useful for pedagogical purposes). 

Phonetic transcription

Although a desk dictionary cannot give all the alternative pronunciations possible, transcription seems to be accurate and reliable. Unlike AMSZ, it uses the same symbol to transcribe the dipthong in so as most present-day British monolingual dictionaries which are used by many Hungarian learners in conjunction with bilingual dictionaries. The I  in amiable, ammonia and similar words are transcribed with an /i/ rather than a /j/; although both are possible, for the Hungarian learner it is better to practice half-syllabic /I/. On the other hand, syllabic consonants are always transcribed with the addition of a schwa. For Hungarian learners, however, it would be better to get used to syllabic consonants, a schwa in round brackets, e.g. /teib()l/ would provide a useful compromise.

The general principle of not providing a transcription with compounds (roughshod, nonfinite) runs counter to another principle (of user-friendliness), namely that the reader should not be referred from entry to entry.

Grammar in the dictionary

The dictionaries, while using symbols economically, still manage to give a lot of help in grammar; help that other dictionaries often do not provide. Irregularity in both verbs and nouns is indicated in both dictionaries. The grammar labels are, in general, good, and the use of capital letters enhances clarity. A very useful feature in MAK is the grammar label hátravetve which highlights differences in word order in English and Hungarian and supports the Hungarocentric character of the dictionaries, e.g.
 

felvidéki MNÉV
HÁTRAVETVE: of the highland

What I do not quite understand is why the symbol noncount is used in the English-Hungarian dictionary: I think it would be much more important to have this information in the opposite direction. 

Style and geographical varieties of English

I think the authors sometimes went too far in cutting down on symbols indicating geographical variety, stylistic markedness or field of use. With all the conveniences of user-friendliness, users still have to learnhow to use a dictionary, even this dictionary. Dictionaries can also educate users in dictionary using skills: there is no idiot-proof dictionary. On the other hand, the non-use or over-economical use of some traditional lexicographical devices may not serve the interests of those who would be willing and able to make the effort to extract more information. 

While in general I agree with the authors' claim that stylistic markers are often contradictory and inconsistent in monolingual dictionaries, and that the Hungarian equivalent itself will in most cases indicate stylistic value, I am still uncomfortable with the use of the general-purpose STOP warning (which unfortunately looks very much like the numbers for meanings) and the lack of reference to stylistic value or geographical variety in many cases. Thus, for example Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Contemporary English (OALDCE) marks nosy parker, nosh, nit, allotment as "mainly/esp. Brit", while AMK does not. In the case of necktie - nyakkendõ, OALDCE says dated or US, AMK contains no such reference. Sometimes the principle that no warning is given when the English and Hungarian term have the same value is not followed, e.g. naughty bits - (férfi) nemiszervek. Thus, while AMK is an easy-to-use dictionary, I cannot help feeling that sometimes ease of use reduces reliability.

Phraseology 

AMK and MAK contain the most important phraseological units of the day, and since they are not unabridged dictionaries they cannot take responsibility for the rest. My impression is that the most common phrases are there. Some phrases are incorporated within the body of the entry, and those that cannot be directly related to one of the meanings are given at the end under the heading KIFEJEZÉSEK. I have no fault to find with this solution and am ready to accept that it might work better than other arrangements.

Trying to check the usefulness of AMK I looked up words and phraseological units from 10 newspaper articles used for the translation paper in intermediate level examinations and did not find the following:

sleep loss, think straight, advance information, communal stairway, thunder past, sufferer, abnegate (responsibility), hold (strong) opinions on, collision course, recorded (accident), bedevilled, routinely, work stoppage, mass transit, stretch to the limit, armed robbery, up close, spawn a curse, locust plague, ill afford, traffic congestion, mounting concern, consulting session, cardiac unit, early-morning, late-afternoon, day-long, pull out of, downhill race/course, medal night, lie at the heart of, commercial jets

As the list shows, there are very few words that AMK did not contain (abnegate, bedevilled, sufferer, routinely). Quite a large number of items that are not included, at least not in the form shown above, are collocations and other multiword units, most of which can be interpreted on the basis of the context and the components.

We can draw two lessons from this: first, that no dictionary can hold all the possible word combinations of a language, and second, that this places a constraint on user-friendliness: the totally unsophisticated dictionary user cannot be helped.

Reservations

Even this dictionary has to follow certain general principles, which in individual cases may cause some inconvenience. There is a set order of parts of speech when a word is used as several parts of speech, but this order may not correspond to frequency: the noun meaning of nasty  is probably less frequent than the adjective meaning, yet it must come first because that is the general order of parts of speech in these dictionaries. I had difficulty in finding the word damages  because I wanted to find it in the entry for damage; apparently, following the authors’ general principle, damages  was given a separate entry, but with intervening words in the alphabetic order it was more difficult to find than if it had been left in the entry for damage.

While most of the grammar labels are good and increase user-friendliness (HÁTRAVETVE, mentioned above, is an especially useful invention);  the following is not very easy to comprehend: nice (FNÉV), shame about the (FNÉV) - (milyen) szép/jó a (FNÉV), (csak) kár, hogy a (FNÉV) ilyen (vacak). To me this seems a bit complicated and does not give more information than the example following it (nice face, shame about the body). I also have some doubts about the use of the symbol MONDAT, since it is used in the sense of clause. The term TAGMONDAT or MELLÉK-MONDAT would be more accurate here. But this is really irrelevant: from the practical point of view the problem is that in the English items the authors dare not write MONDAT where a non-finite clause is needed, since they realise that it would confuse the dictionary user. So nothing much is gained by the use of this symbol.

A general problem with dictionaries for production, such as a Hungarian-English dictionary for Hungarians (MAK), is that the user must have a lot of help if he is expected to be able to choose a contextually acceptable equivalent in a given situation, especially with category 3 to 5 words. In this respect MAK cannot do more than other dictionaries, indeed, by neglecting stylistic labels it sometimes gives less help. Thus, for instance, kacsa (hírlapi)  is canard, hoax, false report, and of course the order does not show that hoax is the most frequent and of course false report   has a neutral stylistic value while kacsa is informal. Neither does the user get enough help with such culturally bound terms as docens  and adjunktus, which share the same equivalents - associate professor and senior lecturer - with no advice on when to use one or the other.

Part of the problem is incurable: a dictionary for production just cannot give enough information, even if a complicated system of symbols is used. Bilingual dictionaries in general have a problem in handling culturally bound terms, and it is here that one begins to think of mixed-type dictionaries. Of course, the authors are aware of the problem and note in their introduction that such words cannot be translated, so in certain situations it is best to borrow the original word (e.g. kifli). 

However, words like cigányozik, zsidózik, or magyarkodik  cannot be borrowed and have to be translated, and are translated in MAK. And here comes my second problem: with category 3 to 5 words it is not always clear whether the equivalent you get is a fully lexicalised and established word/phrase in English, a more or less exact match or a partial equivalent, or an explanation or a paraphrase. The word disznótor  is pig killing feast and disznótoros  is pork sausage and chitterlings, and the user might be led to believe that these are English lexical items in their own right. This problem, I think, could be remedied to some extent, by the introduction or reintroduction of some symbols. The principles of user-friendliness may call for economical use of symbols, but over-economical use of symbols may also create problems. 
If a Hungarian-English dictionary wants to be user-friendly, it must give more help in this area. And talking of user-friendliness: what I would like to see one day in a Hungarian-English dictionary is transcription of the English equivalents. When I need an English word, I probably need its pronunciation, too, and why should I have to look it up again in another dictionary? Perhaps the authors will oblige me in their revised edition.

Conclusion

AMK and MAK do as much as a bilingual desk dictionary for general purposes can do - and more. They are indeed specially adapted to the Hungarian dictionary user, and not least the learner. They contain the most important (and interesting) words of our age in general use. The equivalents are usually well chosen and the explanations are accurate and easy to understand.

Living up to the authors’ claims, AMK and MAK are user friendly, indeed. There are no unnecessary symbols and references and most of those used do a very good job. The dictionaries provide a lot of help with the grammar of the words, they contain the most important phraseological units and these units are easily found. I think the dictionaries could give more information on stylistic markedness (however difficult) and geographical varieties of English, more help in discriminating between partial equivalents in the Hungarian-English direction, more information on the lexical status of equivalents or paraphrases for culturally bound items, and perhaps, phonetic transcription in this dictionary, too.

I find the underlying principles sound, common sense and in many respects novel, and there are only a few points where I disagree. I find that the authors successfully implement their ideas in practice, again with only a few minor hitches. From the lexicographical point of view, the lesson seems to be that efforts to increase user-friendliness should be continued and perhaps along the lines of this pioneering work. On the other hand, it should be borne in mind that user-friendliness is not a unitary concept: it depends on the type of the supposed user and the kind of use by the reader. And of course it must be recognised that user-friendliness also has its limits.

All in all, I think these exciting, novel and modern new dictionaries are well worth buying - and they are available at a reasonable price. Continuously improved (hopefully) they will indeed achieve their proud aim of becoming "a dictionary for the 2000s". 
 

References

Baker, M., & Kaplan, R. (1994). Translated! A new breed of bilingual dictionaries. Babel, Revue de la Federation International du Traducteurs, 40 (1). 1-11.
Országh, L. & Magay, T. (1998). Angol-magyar nagyszótár. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
Snell-Hornby, M. (1995). Translation Studies. An Integrated approach. Revised edition. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Thompson's dictionary for Hungarian learner's of English. (1991). Budapest: Közgazdasági és Jogi Kiadó. 
Hornby, A. S. (1989). Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary of Contemporary English. Fourth Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.