Georgian-Russian Dictionary of Linguistic Terms for Caucasiology

Abstract

The TSU Arnold Chikobava Institute of Linguistics Department of Scientific Terminology and Bilingual Dictionaries has started work on a bilingual dictionary of linguistic terms for the field of Caucasiology. The idea for this pair of dictionaries came from the translation of scientific papers from Russian to Georgian and vice versa because the Caucasian languages are distinguished by linguistic diversity. Moreover there is no  such dictionary in the field of Caucasiology.

Students and postgraduates, as well as specialists working in this field will be able to use the dictionary of linguistic terms for Caucasiology.

While working on the dictionary we use existing explanatory encyclopedic dictionaries of linguistic terminology as well as all the materials from our verbal and written practice in translation.

Working on the dictionary consists of two stages: compiling the Georgian-Russian dictionary followed by compiling the Russian-Georgian dictionary.

The main object of this work is to accumulate linguistic terms and terminological collocations related to Caucasiology and then find their exact Russian equivalents.

Special attention is paid to the compilation of vocabulary, as this predefines the volume and quality of any dictionary. There is not yet and estimate of the number of lexical units that we expect to include.

The dictionary will be enriched by general terminology used in the scientific literature in the area of Caucasiology and the terminology found in the some scholars’ papers. At the early stage of our work, we prefer an alphabetical order for linguistic terminology rather than alphabetically arranged groupings, which will help any user to find terms and terminological collocations quickly. This is the reason why the links system is used.

Synonymous terms cause exceptional difficulty. As is well known, linguistic terminology is not homogenous. Linguistics consists of a number of branches within which coexist various schools and tendencies, and from a historical perspective-various paradigms. In this case, it becomes even more necessary to find the differences between synonymous terms and provide exact translations, or proper linking in the case of alternatives.