Tinatin Margalitadze

English-Georgian Dictionary

The origins of European-Georgian lexicography
The history of European-Georgian lexicography gives a chronographically precise account of both the interest of European nations in Georgia and the Georgian people’s aspirations to and their interest in European countries.

The history of European-Georgian lexicography begins back in 1629 with the publication in Rome of a Georgian-Italian Dictionary[6]. The book is important for its being the first printed book in Georgian. The dictionary was compiled by Stefano Paolini and a Georgian diplomat Niceforo Irbachi. In the 17th century, the lexicographic work with respect to the Italian language continued. An Italian missionary, Bernardo Maria da Napoli, who had lived and worked in Georgia for almost 10 years, compiled Italian-Georgian and Georgian-Italian dictionaries. The said dictionaries have not been yet published in their printed form and exist in the form of manuscripts[33, pp. 30-78; 30, pp. 171-180].
Bilingual Georgian dictionaries of the 17th century were created mainly with respect to the Italian language. The aggressive policy of the neighbouring Muslim states towards Georgia made Georgians seek Western help and support. In its turn, the Roman Catholic Church was interested in the setting up of its missionary centres in the East. They believed that the establishment of such centres would promote the spreading of the Roman Catholic faith. Georgia was among the states which attracted the attention of the Vatican. In the 17th century missionaries were sent to Georgia from Rome and they showed considerable interest in the Georgian language and culture and also learned Georgian which, as they believed, could facilitate their preaching Catholicism and would help them spread the Catholic religion much more successfully. This situation naturally had its impact on the Georgian bilingual lexicography of the 17th century.

The 18th century saw the further compilation of Georgian-Italian dictionaries. In particular, an unknown Italian missionary usually referred to as the “Anonym from Gori” compiled an Italian-Georgian dictionary supposedly in 1724[33, p. 68; 30, p. 174].

Also in the 18th century, a Dutch orientalist Nicolaas Witsen, together with a Georgian nobleman Alexander Bagrationi, created a Dutch-Georgian dictionary, which was annexed by Witsen to the second edition of his book Noord en Oost Tartarye (“North and East Tartary”) [30, p. 175; 34].

In the 19th century, Georgia became a part of the Russian Empire, a fact which affected the status of Georgian bilingual lexicography. In the 19th century important bilingual dictionaries were created, mainly Russian-Georgian and Georgian-Russian ones. French-Georgian dictionaries also belong to this period, reflecting considerable interest of Georgian nobility in the French language.

In the course of the 17th and the 18th centuries, bilingual dictionaries were initiated and created by foreigners. Dire social and political situation, accompanied by a constant struggle for physical survival characteristic of this period, could not, naturally, provide adequate conditions for the development of such a complex field of activity, as lexicography. Against this backdrop, the lexicographic activities and the dictionary of Sulkhan-Saba Orbeliani, a prominent Georgian writer and public figure, become much more conspicuous and outstanding.

The situation began to change in the 19th century. There were published bilingual dictionaries created by Georgian authors. In the 19th century, the Georgian language fell within the orbit of the Russian language and was heavily influenced by the latter. Russian barbarisms were uncontrolledly assimilated by the Georgian vocabulary. Concerned with the fact, Georgian writers, scholars and public figures tried to create dictionaries which would protect the purity of the Georgian language. Prefaces of many dictionaries, published in this period, directly indicate the motive for their creation namely, the protection of the purity of the Georgian language[1; 21].

As mentioned above, the only language besides Russian, in respect to which dictionaries were created in the 19th century was French. Another language, which began to appear in the Georgian bilingual lexicography of this period, was Latin, which was mainly used for the compilation of specialized terminological dictionaries.

Initial stage of English-Georgian lexicography
Not unlike the situation with the initial stage of European-Georgian lexicography, the English-Georgian lexicography began in the 19th century with the creation of English-Georgian word-lists by English authors. While exploring English-Georgian literary relationships, Georgian scholars also paid great attention to the lexicographic contacts between the two nations. “Memoir of a map of the countries comprehended between the Black Sea and the Caspian; with an account of the Caucasian nations, and the vocabularies of their languages” by G. Ellis, published in London in 1788 is regarded as one of the very first attempts of English authors to study Caucasian languages, including Georgian. Along with the discussion of the history, culture, religion, etc. of Caucasian peoples, the book also contains a minor (about 130 words) dictionary of Caucasian languages with their corresponding English translations[29, p. 32; 30, pp. 147-159].

This peace of work was followed by a dictionary of 224 words by D. Peacock, comprising data from Georgian, Mingrelian, Laz, Svan and Abkhazian languages with their English correspondences[29, pp. 33 – 34].

Among the word-lists compiled in the 19th century, we must mention an English-Georgian dictionary of 1,000 words compiled by Marjory S. Wardrop in the process of her work on the translation into English of Rustaveli’s poem Knight in the Panther's Skin, and 200-word fragment (letter B) of her unfinished Georgian-English dictionary.

Personal archives of David Barrett, Consultant in Caucasian and Central Asian Studies to the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, contain English-Georgian word-list including 4,000 entries, compiled by Mr Barrett himself[29, pp. 35 – 36].

English-Georgian lexicography in the 20th century
Dictionaries by Isidorè Gvarjaladze
The 1930s saw the almost simultaneous creation of English-Georgian and Georgian-English dictionaries. The first English-Georgian dictionary (20,000 entries) was published in Georgia in 1939. It was compiled by Isidorè Gvarjaladze, a professor at Tbilisi Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages. In the same year, Eka Cherkezi in England completed her work on a Georgian-English dictionary, but its publication was delayed by the World War II. The book was eventually published in 1959 by Oxford University Press[2].

Thus, Professor Gvarjaladze is the pioneer of English-Georgian lexicography. It is worth mentioning, that Eka Cherkezi began her work in 1928, dedicating her dictionary to Oliver Wardrop.

The so-called “Gvarjaladze dictionary” has since been republished many times. The author also published a Georgian-English dictionary and an English-Georgian dictionary of proverbs. The last books of the series were printed in 1975 – “English-Georgian Dictionary” (40,000 entries) and in 1979 – “Georgian English Dictionary” (40,000 entries), both in co-authorship with Tamar Gvarjaladze [10; 11; 12]. For a long time, these dictionaries were the only available dictionaries of their kind and have done the Georgian public a great service. Online versions of the said English-Georgian and Georgian-English dictionaries can be found at the following Internet address: www.translate.ge

English-Georgian dictionary by Juansher Mchedlishvili
In 1990s, Juansher Mchedlishvili, another professor from the Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages, published his English-Georgian Dictionary, which is in fact a type of learner’s dictionary. The dictionary was based on learner’s dictionaries published by the Oxford University Press and Longman publishing company and was primarily adapted for teaching purposes. In 2009, in co-authorship with David Mchedlishvili and Ivetta Gotsiridze, the eighth, corrected and supplemented edition of the dictionary was published which comprised up to 67,000 words and expressions[16]. Indisputably, the said dictionary has done a great service to the students and teachers from the Georgian institutions of secondary and higher education and still remains one of the most popular educational and lexicographic sources for Georgian readers.

The Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary created by the Lexicographic Centre at Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
The history of the Dictionary
In 1995, the Lexicographic Centre at Iv. Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University began the publication of the fascicles of its Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary. Currently, printed and published are 14 fascicles of the English-Georgian Dictionary (letters A – P), which cover 2,380 pages of the dictionary[7]. The publication of the remaining four fascicles of the Dictionary is intended before the end of 2015, after which the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary will be presented to the reading public in the form of a two-volume edition.

The idea to create a comprehensive English-Georgian academic dictionary was conceived back in the 1960s at the Department of English Philology of Tbilisi State University. The initiator of the project was a prominent Georgian scholar and translator, the then Head of the Department, Professor Givi Gachechiladze. As far as the lack of an academic English-Georgian dictionary was especially acutely felt by translators, the creation of such a dictionary was primarily determined by the need to adequately translate English-language literature into Georgian. At the initial stages of the work on the Dictionary, in the 1960s and 1970s, it was decided to use English-Russian dictionaries as source material and to merely translate them into Georgian. This erroneous decision made all preliminary work and translated materials already accumulated practically useless.

In the 1980s, a small team of editors embarked on a thorough revision of the dictionary material and preparation for the publication of the Dictionary. The editors of the English-Georgian Dictionary arrived at a decision to use comprehensive, English, monolingual dictionaries as major sources for the project. Namely, the Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (OED)[18; 19; 20; 22] and Webster’s Third New International Dictionary [24] were selected, whose definitions became the basic source for the semantic investigation of English words. The editorial team also relied on the New English-Russian Dictionary by Ilya Galperin[17], as well as on other dictionaries, such as Longman[14], COBUILD[3] and other trustworthy sources. This stage of the work on the dictionary has lasted for 30 years.

In 1992, the Editorial Board decided to digitalize the edited entries of the Dictionary and to start publishing the Dictionary in fascicles on a letter-by-letter basis. In 1995, the first fascicle of the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary, the letter A, was published which was soon (1996) followed by two more fascicles, letters B and C. The Georgian scientific community, as well as foreign Kartvelologists, attached great importance to the beginning of the publication of the New English-Georgian Dictionary (www.margaliti.ge).

In 2009, the Editorial Board made the decision to develop an online version of the Dictionary and to post it on the Internet. In February 2010, the Dictionary was posted on the Internet at the address www.dict.ge The Online Dictionary is by no means a stereotyped version of the printed edition of the Comprehensive English Georgian Dictionary. First fascicles of the English Georgian Dictionary, which were prepared and published back in the 1980s and 1990s, have undergone a thorough revision. The online version has also comprised letters from Q to Z, not published yet as fascicles.

The Comprehensive English Georgian Dictionary presently contains up to 110,000 entries. Taking into consideration the fact that dictionary entries fully represent the polysemy of English words, contain numerous collocations, phrasal verbs, phraseological units, ample amount of scientific and technical, economic and artistic terms, as well as terms from various other fields – the total material contains several hundred thousand units.

The search system of the online dictionary makes it possible to look up English as well as Georgian words, collocations and phrases.

The word-list of the Dictionary
The selection of the word-list for the Dictionary was determined by the target groups for which it was initially intended – namely translators of English belles-lettres and scientific literature into Georgian, specialists working on specialized, branch-specific texts, learners of English, for whom English is their future speciality, also prospective psychologists, physicians, biologists, etc. who study English and need to know foreign special terms and their Georgian equivalents, as well as learners of English in general. The abovementioned target groups determined the inclusion in the Dictionary of modern vocabulary of the English language characterized by high frequency of occurrence, as well as the inclusion of less frequently used words, rare, obsolete, archaic, words or rare, obsolete and archaic meanings of modern words. The dictionary has included terms from almost all fields of knowledge.

Consequently, the English-Georgian Online Dictionary is primarily intended for English language specialists, teachers, translators and specialists from various fields, who have to work on special terms; the Dictionary is also intended for learners of English in general, as well as for the individuals, interested in English.

Semantic asymmetry between English and Georgian languages
One of the important issues faced by the editors of the CEGD has been ‘linguistic and cultural anisomorphism’ between the English and Georgian languages, resulting in semantic asymmetry of seemingly similar words of these languages. English-Georgian lexicography is not exceptional in this respect, as it is the central problem of bilingual lexicography at large [25; 26; 28; 31; 32; 35]. This problem is well-formulated in the definitions of ‘equivalence’ and ‘equivalent’ in the Dictionary of Lexicography by Hartmann and James. ‘Because of linguistic and cultural anisomorphism, translation equivalents are typically partial, approximative, non-literal and asymmetrical (rather than full, direct, word-for-word and bidirectional). Their specification in the bilingual dictionary is therefore fraught with difficulties, and recourse must be made to surrogate explanatory equivalents’ [13, p. 51].

Semantic asymmetry is even wider between genetically unrelated and structurally completely different languages as is the case with the Georgian and English languages.

In order to solve the problem of linguistic equivalence, in the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary there are distinguished: equivalent of meaning and translational/contextual equivalent. The goal of the editors of the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary has always been to describe the equivalence between the English and Georgian languages on a more general, systemic level of the two languages, rather than give only the Georgian equivalents of English words found in particular contexts; e.g.

Rough: ustsormastsoro, khorkliani, ukheshi/aragluvi zedapiris mkone (lit. uneven, of rough/coarse surface); rough road oghrochoghro gza (lit. uneven / bumpy road); rough edges [surface] ustsormastsoto kideebi [zedapiri] (lit. uneven edges [surface]); rough skin khorkliani / khesheshi kani (lit. calloused skin); rough cloth ukheshi / mkise ksovili (lit. coarse fabric); rough hands ukheshi / dakozhrebuli khelebi (lit. calloused hands).

In this example, ustsormastsoro, khorkliani, ukheshi/aragluvi zedapiris mkone (lit. uneven, of rough/coarse surface) is an equivalent of meaning, whereas oghrochoghro, ustsormastsoto, khorkliani, khesheshi, etc. are translational/contextual equivalents.

The editors of the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary have developed a technique of combining equivalents of meanings (i. e. informatively more valuable or explanatory equivalents of lexical units) with translational/contextual equivalents presented in different illustrative phrases and sentences selected for entries. This is one of the novelties introduced by the team of the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary into English-Georgian lexicography [27].

The Editorial Board of the Dictionary comprises: Shukia Apridonidze, Tinatin Margalitadze (Editor in Chief), George Meladze, Ariane Chanturia, Gela Khundadze.

Donald Rayfield’s Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary
“For English-reading students of Georgian outside of Georgia, a Georgian-English dictionary is far and away the greatest need; without such a work, the glorious treasures of the Georgian past and the excitement and promise of the present remain a closed book for us,” wrote Howard Aronson, a professor from Chicago University and a kartvelologist in his letter sent to the Editorial Board of the Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary in 1998, where he greatly appreciated already published fascicles of the English-Georgian Dictionary, congratulating its Creative Team upon their achievement: “I congratulate you and your group on an outstanding achievement! Unquestionably, this will be the definitive English-Georgian Dictionary and clearly far, far surpasses all previous attempts at creating such dictionaries” (http://margaliti.ge/new/feedback.htm).

The basic principles of this Georgian-English Dictionary were first adumbrated by Donald Rayfield in a paper given to a Caucausological Symposium in Paris in 1988. Only twelve years later, the happy conjunction of developments in the Internet, of research funding in Britain and the availability of a compatible team of compilers in London and Tbilisi turned the dream of such a dictionary into reality.

The Georgian-English Dictionary presents an English equivalent for practically the entire lexical corpus of the Georgian language, ancient, classical and modern, as well as literary, colloquial and dialectal. The Dictionary is published in two volumes and comprises 140,000 word-entries.

The Dictionary includes virtually all the entries from the eight-volume Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language (often referred to as KEGL). The second major source is a database listing about two million word forms and their frequency in the Georgian daily and weekly press (from 1999-2002). Thirdly, there have been used a searchable electronic version, and a list of all word forms, of forty substantial texts by contemporary writers, predominantly novelists, such as Grigol Robakidze, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Mikheil Javakhishvili, Otar Chiladze, Chabua Amiredjibi, Bachana Bregvadze, Besik Kharanauli, Guram Dochanashvili, Tamaz Chkhenkeli, Vakhushti Kotetishvili, Aka Morchiladze and others. The fourth major source were Ilia Abuladze’s and Zurab Sarjveladze’s compilations and dictionaries of Old Georgian. There have been (selectively) used about thirty dictionaries of the various dialects of modern Georgian and dictionaries from various branches of science and technology. The Georgian-English Dictionary has also incorporated a substantial body of modern colloquial, including vulgar, expressions.

The Dictionary is, in the first place, intended for English-speaking readers, interested in Georgian literary texts, Georgian historical sources, Kartvelian languages. This is why the Dictionary has comprised the vocabulary from Old Georgian and Middle Georgian periods, dialectal material, etc. The Dictionary is also intended for Georgian users.

Unlike European-Georgian bilingual dictionaries, the dictionaries of Georgian-European type face a major problem, namely that of the Georgian verb. As we know, the Editorial Board of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language found a new way of representing Georgian verbs in the Dictionary. Namely, while Georgian dictionaries traditionally included verbs represented in the form of masdar or verbal noun, which could not fully express the semantic richness and all the categories of the verb, the team working on KEGL renounced this tradition, deciding instead to represent not only initial forms of Georgian verbs, but also specific verb-forms according to verbal categories of person, version, voice, dynamic or static passive, etc.[8, preface]. So the Explanatory Dictionary includes not only initial verb-forms (masdar, verbal noun) but also third-person forms of all above-listed categories in present (future) tense:

თესვა tesva masdar, verbal noun
თესავს tesavs third person singular form, neutral version
ითესავს itesavs subjective version
უთესავს utesavs objective version
ათესვინებს atesvinebs causative verb
ითესება iteseba intransitive verb - dynamic passive
თესია tesia intransitive verb - static passive etc.

Kita Chkhenkeli in his Georgian-German dictionary chose the run-on layout of dictionary entries for verbs. The verbs are represented by their stems without prefixes and all their lexical derivatives and grammatical forms are included in the same entry. In his Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary, Donald Rayfield follows the principle developed by Arnold Chikobava and includes in the dictionary all above-listed verb forms. e.g.

თესვა tesva ‘sowing (seed ...)’
თესავს tesavs ‘sows he/she, it (seed …)’
ითესავს itesavs ‘sows he/she, it (seed …) for oneself’
უთესავს utesavs ‘sows he/she, it (seed …) for smb’
ითესება iteseba ‘it (seed…) is being sown’
თესია tesia ‘has been sown (seed …)’
ათესვინებს atesvinebs ‘has smb sow smth (seed …)’
etc.

In the preface of the Dictionary, Donald Rayfield himself gives the following explanation for this approach: “Such a multiplicity of entries (sometimes twenty finite entries for a verb listed in conventional dictionaries by one entry) inflates the size of our dictionary but will, we hope, economize the time employed by the user. All other procedures seemed to us to have more disadvantages than advantages. Listing forms under a masdar is arbitrary, since many verbs do not have a masdar, others have a masdar which cannot easily be ascertained, and the masdar itself has such a range of meanings that it does little to explain the meaning of a finite form. The method chosen by Tschenkéli to list verbs by root, then by prefixes, is satisfying for a professional linguist, but it can force a lay user to search for an hour to find a single specific finite form. Until an electronic system is perfected for unifying the prodigious numbers of forms of a Georgian verb into one entry, the path we have chosen seems to be the least of all the evils” [5, p. XI].

The Editorial Board of the Dictionary comprises: Rusudan Amiredjibi, Shukia Apridonidze, Laurence Broers, Ariane Chanturia, Levan Chkhaidze, Tinatin Margalitadze, Donald Rayfield (Editor in Chief).

* * *
In recent years, a new direction – English-Georgian specialized lexicography – can be observed in the English-Georgian lexicography. While in the past specialized dictionaries were predominantly compiled in respect to the Russian language and English-Georgian specialized dictionaries were comparatively rare[9; 15], nowadays there is seen an urgent need for English-Georgian specialized dictionaries.
In 2009, the Lexicographic Centre at TSU compiled the English-Georgian Military Dictionary, whose online version is available at the address http://mil.dict.ge Nearing its completion currently is the work on the English-Georgian Biological Dictionary, which is available on the Internet at the address http://bio.dict.ge.

Bibliography:
A. Dictionaries
1. Aghniashvili, L., Pocket Dictionary, Tbilisi 1887.
2. Cherkesi, E., Georgian-English Dictionary, Oxford 1950.
3. Collins COBUILD English Language Dictionary, London and Glasgow 1987.
4. Comprehensive English-Georgian Dictionary (Editor-in-Chief – T. Margalitadze). TSU Lexicographic Centre, Tbilisi 2010. www.dict.ge
5. Comprehensive Georgian-English Dictionary (Editor-in-Chief – D. Rayfield), London 2006.
6. Dittionario Georgiano e Italiano composto da Stefano Paolini con l’aiuto del M.R.P.D. Nicefore Irbachi, Giorgiano, Roma 1629.
7. English-Georgian Dictionary (Editor-in-Chief – T. Margalitadze). 14 fascicles. Lexicographic Centre, Tbilisi 1995-2008.
8. Explanatory Dictionary of the Georgian Language (Editor-in-Chief – Arn. Chikobava), v. I, “Publishing House of the Georgian Academy of Sciences”, Tbilisi 1950.
9. Gabeskiria, Ts., English-Georgian Mathematical Dictionary, “Tbilisi University Press”, Tbilisi 1983.
10. Gvardjaladze, I., Gvardjaladze, T., Georgian-English Dictionary, Tbilisi 1979.
11. Gvardjaladze, I., Gvardjaladze, T., English-Georgian Dictionary, Tbilisi 1975.
12. Gvardjaladze, I., Kusrashvili, M., English Proverbs and Figurative Expressions, Tbilisi 1976.
13. Hartmann, R. R. K. and James, G. Dictionary of Lexicography, London 1998.
14. Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture, Longman 1992.
15. Menabde, Ts., Concise English-Russian-Georgian Biological Dictionary, “Metsniereba”, Tbilisi 1983.
16. Mchedlishvili, Dj., Mchedlishbili, D., Gotsiridze, I., English-Georgian Dictionary, Tbilisi 2009.
17. New English-Russian Dictionary (in two volumes). Galperin I. R. (Editor-in-Chief) et al. Moscow 1972.
18. Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, vol. I – XIII; suppl. I – IV, “Oxford University Press”.
19. Oxford Dictionary of English, Second Edition, Revised. “Oxford University Press” 2005.
20. Oxford English Dictionary, Second edition on CD-ROM, Version 2.0.
21. Sakhokia, T., Russian-Georgian Dictionary, Tbilisi 1987
22. Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Sixth Edition, “Oxford University Press” 2007.
23. Tschenkeli, K., Georgisch-Deutsches Worterbuch, Zurich 1960- 1974.
24. Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (Unabridged), Merriam Webster Inc., 1981.

B. Scientific literature
25. Adamska-Salaciak A., “Examining Equivalence”, International Journal of Lexicography, 4, “Oxford University Press”, 2010, pp. 387-409.
26. Hartmann, R. R. K., ”Interlingual Lexicography”, Selected Essays on Translation Equivalence, Contrastive Linguistics and the Bilingual Dictionary, Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2007.
27. Margalitadze, T., „The Comprehensive English-Georgian Online Dictionary: Methods, Principles, Modern Technologies“, XV EURALEX International Congress. University of Oslo, Norway 2012. www.euralex.org/elx_proceedings/Euralex2012/pp764-770 Margalitadze.pdf
28. Neubert, A., “Fact and Fiction of the Bilingual Dictionary”, EURALEX ’90 Proceedings, Barcelona1990.
29. Odzeli, M., Towards the History of Georgian-English Literary Relations, Tbilisi 1998
30. Орловская, Н., Очерки по Вопросам Литературных Связей, Тбилиси 2013.
31. Snell-Hornby, M., “The Bilingual Dictionary – Help or Hindrance”, Lexeter ‘83 Proceedings. Tübingen1984.
32. Sundström, M. P., “Tackling Lexicographical Anisomorphism in Front Matter Comments”, EURALEX ’92 Proceedings I-II, Tampere: Studia Translatologica 1992.
33. Uturgaidze, T., The history of studying Georgian, Tbilisi 1999.
34. Witsen, N., Noord en Oost Tartarye, Amsterdam 1705, pp. 506-515.
35. Zgusta, L., “Translational Equivalents in the Bilingual Dictionary”, Lexeter ‘83 Proceedings. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1984.