DICTIONARIES

Selection

Dictionaries play a very important role in the work of every translator. Translator can choose between traditional and online dictionaries. However, these should be treated with some caution depending on who compiled them. Machine translation is very popular nowadays, but every professional is aware of its imperfections. For this reason, I prefer in my work traditional dictionaries compiled by respected linguists and institutions.

Dictionaries of the Slovak language

The most popular dictionaries of the Slovak language include: Krátky slovník slovenského jazyka (Short Dictionary of Slovak) compiled by Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics, edited by Ján Kačalu and Mária Pisárčiková, and Synonymický slovník slovenčiny (Slovak Synonym Dictionary) compiled by Mária Pisárčíková and published by Veda at the Slovak Academy of Sciences.

Translation dictionaries

The first Polish-Slovak and Slovak-Polish translation dictionary I used was compiled by Mikuláš Stano and Ferdinand Buffo and published in 1982 by Slovenské Pedagogické Nakladateľstvo in Bratislava. In 2010, a two-volume Slovak-Polish dictionary was published, compiled by Slavists from Jagiellonian University - Zofia Jurczak-Trojan, Halina Mieczkowska, Elżbieta Orwińska-Ruziczka and Maryla Papierz.

Technical dictionaries

Polish-Slovak Dictionary of Legal and Economic Terminology compiled by Vlasta Juchniewiczová, Gabriela Zoričáková and Maryla Papierz published by Wiedza Powszechna in 2008 contains approximately 20000 specialised entries and subwords in the field of economics, international trade, marketing, finance, banking, stock exchange, insurance, transport, civil, criminal and economic law. 

Online dictionaries of the Slovak language

I recommend dictionaries of the Slovak language available on the Ľ. Štúr Institute of Linguistics website.

The institute was established in 1943 under the name Linguistic Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Arts - SAV, in 1952 it was renamed the Slovak Language Institute SAV, and since 1966 it has its present name. It is a scientific institution which conducts research on the Slovak national language, its territorial and social diversity, and its history. The research covers theoretical issues of general linguistics, language culture, professional terminology and onomastics. The results of this research are codification manuals and dictionaries containing professional terminology.

Among the Institute's most significant scientific achievements are research on the grammatical structure of the Slovak language (Morphology of the Slovak Language, 1966), vocabulary dynamics (Vocabulary Dynamics of Contemporary Slovak, 1989), vocabulary of the national language (Slovak Language Dictionary, 1959-1968; Short Dictionary of Slovak, 4th ed., 2003; Slovak Synonym Dictionary, 2nd ed., 2000; Dictionary of Historical Slovak, 7 vol., 1991 - 2008; Slovak Dialect Dictionary, up to now 2 vol.,1994, 2006; Dictionary of Contemporary Slovak, up to now 2 vol., 2006, 2011), the rules of orthography  (The Rules of Slovak Orthography, 3rd ed., 2000), territorial differentiation of Slovak dialects within the Slovak territory as well as Slavic countries and the Carpathian area (Atlas of the Slovak Language, 4 vol., 1968 - 1984; Slavic Linguistic Atlas, up to now 2012; Carpathian-Wide Dialectological Atlas, 8 vol., Introductory (unnumbered) vol. in 1987, vol. 1 - 7 were issued in 1989 - 2003) and confrontational research of the Slavic languages vocabulary (Czech-Slovak Dictionary, 2nd ed. 1981; Great Russian-Slovak Dictionary, 5 vol., 1960 - 1970; Great Slovak-Russian Dictionary, 6 vol., 1979 - 1995). Institute's scientists have published dozens of monographs from various fields of the national language research. The institute also published Linguistic Studies - a series of anthologies, each devoted to one of the linguistic disciplines. Institute of Linguistics is the main organizer or co-organizer of many scientific conferences with international participation.

The main areas of research are: system of the contemporary Slovak language, language in contemporary communication, language culture in theory and practice, professional terminology, etymology and language geography, history of language, onomastics, corpus linguistics and natural language processing.

The most popular electronic dictionaries offered by the Institute are: Slovak Language Dictionary, Short Dictionary of Slovak, Slovak Synonym Dictionary, Dictionary of Contemporary Slovak, Dictionary of Historical Slovak, Slovak Dialect Dictionary, The Rules of Slovak Orthography, Dictionary of Foreign Words and dictionaries containing pronunciation and words inflection, databases of proper names, surnames and places.