The following comments on the Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: Northern Sotho and English were read by one of the adjudicators of the SATI-Award at the award ceremony held at the University of Johannesburg on 2 October 2009.

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This year lexicographers all over the world are celebrating the tercentenary of the birth of Samuel Johnson, the famous British lexicographer. In the preface to his A Dictionary of the English Language (1755) Johnson said:

"It is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward. Among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered not as the pupil, but the slave of science [...] Every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been granted to a very few."

But today SATI is defying this statement of Johnson by awarding a prize to a lexicographer; lexicographer defined so aptly by the same Dr. Johnson as "A writer of dictionaries; a harmless drudge."

Since the publication of Johnson's dictionary lexicography has changed a lot. It became a two-legged animal: the lexicographic practice supplemented by theoretical lexicography which is recognized as an independent discipline. Today we are living in the golden age of lexicography where dictionaries with a sound theoretical base are compiled for clearly identified user groups and where lexicographers are well aware of the specific needs and reference skills of their target users.

Any new dictionary has to be evaluated in terms of this user-perspective and the adjudicators for this prize Mariëtta Alberts, Tom McLachlan and I have tried to do exactly that. We evaluated the shortlisted dictionaries as practical instruments compiled to help specific users in solving specific problems by enabling them to retrieve the required information from the data presented in the dictionary.

The adjudicators were unanimous in their recommendation that the SATI award for excellence in lexicography should go to the Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: Northern Sotho and English, edited by Gilles-Maurice de Schryver.

In this school dictionary the compiler is well aware of the target user and the needs of this user. The lemma selection resulted from the use of a corpus that reflects those high frequency words needed by the target users. The macrostructural presentation deviates from a traditionally linguistic method by following a word rather than a stem-based approach. This emphasizes the fact that the dictionary needs to be seen as a practical instrument and not as a linguistic show case. The treatment of these lemmata leads to a microstructure in which all the data types relevant to the user group prevail. The text production and text reception functions are clearly satisfied by the data selection.

This dictionary displays a frame structure with a range of extremely useful outer texts to make learners aware of the fact that a dictionary is much more than the data on offer in the central list. This also helps to cultivate a dictionary culture in South Africa.

The layout has been done in a user-friendly way to ensure rapid access to the dictionary articles and the data included in these articles.

Samuel Johnson, same guy, remarked that dictionaries are like watches – even the best is not always right but even the worst is better than nothing. The Oxford Bilingual School Dictionary: Northern Sotho and English has its shortcomings, quite a number of them, but it gives its users an accurate indication of the lexicographic time. The South African lexicographic environment has been enriched by this dictionary and the compiler deserves to be enriched by this SATI award.

Prof Rufus H. Gouws
2 October 2009
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