Dictionary Use by Iranian Senior Undergraduate Students of Translation

Translation is indeed a skill, which needs special training. As in other skills, there are some tools that facilitate translating and without these tools, translation would be awkward. One of the most effective and important tools for translation is the dictionary through which, translator finds the required information and speeds the process up. There is a common belief that dictionary, lexicography and terminology are one and the same and are considered as a single subject, while there is a world of difference between them.Dictionary is a book that gives a list of words in alphabetical order and explains their meanings in the same language, or another language. Sinclair (2003) believes that dictionaries are short summaries of information about languages, which describe a coherent subcategory, or the vocabulary of a language.Lexicography is indeed the skill, practice, or profession of writing dictionaries. According to Bowker (2003a), lexicography is the discipline of writing dictionaries through methods and principles. In fact, lexicographers start with the dictionary entry and move form terms to concepts (Cabré, 1999).On the other hand, terminology is the technical words or expressions that are used in a particular subject. As Cabré (1999) puts, terminology is the discipline of studying and compiling specialized terms by moving from the concept to the term. Cabré (2010) also defines terminology as a field of knowledge, deals with the study terms. In another words, terminology is the discipline concerned with the collection, processing, description and presentation of terms, which are lexical items belonging to specialized subject fields (Bowker, 2003b). Bowker (2003a) also believes that terminology relates closely to specialized lexicography.Since the differences have been clarified, it is fairly straightforward to concentrate exclusively on dictionaries.Dictionaries are considered as an essential instrument for translators that can bring great benefits for them and also facilitate their process, however, it is believed that anyone can use them confidently. In fact, according to Law (2009), using dictionary is an everyday activity that can easily be overlooked (p. 18). Translator trainers always take it for granted that students have already known how to use dictionaries professionally.To make things worse, there are almost no empirical researches on dictionary use by students of translation especially in Iran and only a handful of researchers show interest in dictionary-based projects.