With information on usage and register and communication with the other team, there is no reason for the translation not to be good. Each team translates into their native tongue as they master it best - if there is an idiomatic expression in French, the English translator can think of a suitable equivalent. Traditional dictionaries gave rather flat translations like ‘very fast’ or ‘unrestrained’. We were spurred on by work done in the 1950s on automatic translation, which showed word-for-word translation often failed lamentably.įor example - effréné (literally ‘un-braked’) can apply to course (race), luxe (luxury), spéculation, rythme, and suitable translations might include rampant, furious, wild. We use indicators of sense and context and many examples. We don't just say "X means Y," but try to show its nuances in different situations. We try to see how the language is really spoken and written - in the street, in advertising, in contemporary literature - texts are studied in a systematic way with powerful tools to see the multiplicity of contexts in which a word can be used. The old approach was to base a bilingual dictionary on an existing monolingual one - translating each term - which could make them old-fashioned. With a cross-channel approach each side benefits from the other's mother tongue expertise and their experience of working on monolingual dictionaries. The traditional approach was that, for example, a dictionary would be made in the UK for the UK market - perhaps with French people on the team, but with everyone immersed in English. What was so unique about the Collins-Robert? The history of the Collins-Robert starts in the 1960s when two big publishers agreed to work together to create a new kind of bilingual dictionary - written and edited by teams on each side of the channel. In France our biggest competitor is Harrap's and in the UK Oxford-Hachette, but we are still the leader, which is always nice. The two-volume one is used more by translators and university libraries. The Collins-Robert is the top-selling one-volume dictionary, and it is aimed at a wide public. Is a new edition coming out to mark the anniversary? Yes, a new seventh edition has just been published, as well as a new version of our two-volume French-English dictionary and a new electronic version of that.
Oliver Rowland speaks to editorial director Dominique Le Fur. The Collins-Robert, Britain and France's favourite French-English dictionary, turns 30 this year.
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