Representation of a military term and its translation equivalents in English-Russian online dictionaries

Abstract

The study aims to identify the potential of English-Russian dictionaries in the selection of translation equivalents as exemplified by the English military terms used to denote the main types of weapons and military vehicles. The authors refine U Heid’s algorithm of access to an e-dictionary and apply it to the analysis of three online translation dictionaries (Cambridge Dictionary, Multitran and Lingvo Live) in the situation of selecting translation equivalents to the military terms that denote main types of weapons and military equipment used by the US and NATO armed forces. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that the authors for the first time conduct a comparative analysis of online dictionaries in the situation of selecting a translation equivalent to a special (military) term. As a result of analysing the representation of military terminology in English-Russian online dictionaries, the authors prove that Multitran is superior to Lingvo Live and the Cambridge Dictionary in the selection of translation equivalents to military terms, substantiate the importance of a user’s participation in the process of expanding and editing an online dictionary corpus, reveal drawbacks of online dictionaries and provide practical recommendations for the optimisation of an e-dictionary.