“CULTURAL TABLES” IN ITALIAN-SPANISH CONTEMPORARY DICTIONARIES

Abstract

Bilingual dictionaries pay more and more attention to the information about the elements that are intimately linked to the culture of one of the two languages in question. This is why, in the absence of an immediate equivalence in the target language, they constitute a challenge for the lexicographer. Thus, bilingual translation dictionaries find it difficult to offer possible equivalents. The bilingual dictionaries that also want to help the decoding of such lexical units offer more extensive information. They do so either through paraphrases that are in the microstructure of the entries, or through what we have called ‘cultural tables’, encyclopaedic texts that complement certain entries and that have not been offered in bilingual dictionaries up until recently. The cultural tables provided by the three bilingual Italian-Spanish dictionaries –that include them in their microstructure (Garzanti, Herder and Zanichelli)– are studied. The analysis is both quantitative (total number, number per field) and qualitative (which ones are preferred by each dictionary, what type of information is offered). Several of these cultural tables are analysed in detail. We conclude that the selection criteria of the cultural-bound elements as well as the information offered on them are too heterogeneous and often unclear.