Books and literature reveal culture and history. If we want to show our culture to the entire world, or if we want to experience the culture of the rest of the world, we need well-translated books-and if we want well translated books we need a good dictionary. A new English-Georgian Dictionary comprising about 160 000 entries is being published in by the Lexicographic Centre at the department of English philology of Tbilisi State University.

The dictionary is being published in installments, known to the dictionary loving world as fascicles, a practice which has precedents both in Georgia and the rest of the world. Twelve fascicles have emerged so far, and the thirteenth is due to be published in November. The dictionary should be completely ready in three years time.

“Today we are holding the presentation of an uncompleted project; our aim is to show people what has already been achieved. Our wish is to give more people the opportunity of using this dictionary, hence we decided to publish it in fascicles and thus make it more affordable,” Tinatin Margalitadze, docent (that means university teacher to those of you without a decent dictionary of your own), editor and publisher of the English-Georgian dictionary, told The Messenger on July 7.

She also pointed out that a project that carries such nation wide importance needs financial support from the state and other donors in order to carry out its task properly.

“We want to finish our dictionary as soon as possible, but it is very hard for me to finance such a big project alone. If I had other financial sources then I would be able to employ 8 editors instead of 4 and the project would be completed very soon,” Margalitadze said.

The dictionary is essentially based on I. Galperin’s New English-Russian Dictionary (150 000 entries) and its supplement (12 000 entries), but it has been fully revised and enlarged on the basis of the Oxford, Webster, Longman, COBUILD and other dictionaries.

“We are going to unite the fascicles and publish our dictionary in two volumes under the name of Margaliti. We also want to produce a computer version,” said Margalitadze.

The dictionary is primarily intended for specialists of the English language - teachers, linguists, literary critics, translators, students and others, who use English in their work or just want to read English books in the original language. The dictionary is also designed for specialists in different fields and contains various technical terminologies. It is hoped that the dictionary will also be of considerable service to foreigners interested in Georgian.

“This dictionary is equally important for scientists, linguists and professionals of any specialty. With the help of this dictionary we will be able to carry out our work more easily as it contains the terminology necessary in many specialties. It makes our work simpler,” Professor Rusudan Enukidze told The Messenger.

Inesa Merabishvili, Professor and translator, highlighted the importance of the new dictionary for Georgian translators, who in previous years had no choice but to use only English-Russian and then Russian-Georgian dictionaries while translating books from English into Georgian and vice versa.

“Publishing a good dictionary is especially important for translators and specialists of English studies. I have translated several books from English into Georgian, I want to point out that we had to use Russian-Georgian dictionaries while translating and it was really hard work. Now the work will be easier for us as well as for young translators,” Inesa Merabishvili told the paper.

The English-Georgian dictionary has gone through a long and difficult birth. In the 1960s the department of English Philology, on the initiative of famous Georgian translator, Professor Givi Gachechiladze, started working on the dictionary. In 1984 the department invited docent Tinatin Margalitadze as the editor and head of the project; the first fascicle was published in 1995.

“Creating a dictionary is very hard work… but today there are already published 12 fascicles. We are proud and pleased because we, the editorial staff, love our job, we know very well the importance of the dictionary for our nation and its future generations,” Medea Zaalishvili, a member of the editorial staff, told The Messenger.