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Article published In:
Target
Vol. 2:2 (1990) ► pp.199–218

Surely There Must Exist a Polish Equivalent

On the Inadequacy of Dictionary Explications

| Jagiellonian University, Kraków

The paper is a contribution to the ongoing discussion on the requirements that dictionaries should meet in order to satisfy the needs of language learners and translators. The shortcomings of some standard dictionaries are discussed in reference to one particular item: the modal qualifier surely and its Polish equivalents. The latter were compared with actual choices made by a group of advanced Polish learners of English, asked to translate five explanatory sentences taken from English—English dictionaries. Discrepancies between dictionary equivalents and translation replacements clearly suggest that apart from "prototypical" examples of usage, dictionary entries should also contain potential discourse functions of sample sentences.

Article outline
  • 0.Introduction
  • 1.The Semantics of Surely
  • 2.Polish Dictionary Equivalents
  • 3.Analysis of the Data
    • 3.1Chyba
    • 3.2Finite Forms
    • 3.3Polarized Expressions
    • 3.4.Expressions of Increased Probability
    • 3.5The Question Tag
    • 3.6Przecież
    • 3.7Answers
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Dictionaries
  • References
Published online: 1 January 1990
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.2.2.05tab
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1996. The Translation of English Passives into Arabic. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 8:1 ► pp. 97 ff. DOI logo

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