The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Lexicography meet focusses on technological developments

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Friday, Dec 07, 2007
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Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Lexicography meet focusses on technological developments

Staff Reporter

The theme for the conference is ‘Asian Lexicography: Retrospect and Prospect’

— Photo: S.Thanthoni

Souvenir release: Madras University Vice-Chancellor S.Ramachandran (centre) handing over the first copy a souvenir of Asialex to Director, Language Centre, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Gregory James at a function in Chennai on Thursday.

CHENNAI: A three-day biennial conference, fifth in the series, of the Asian Association for Lexicography (Asialex) got under way here on Thursday with speakers at the inaugural session highlighting the need for lexicography to take into account current development in technology.

The theme for the conference will be ‘Asian Lexicography: Retrospect and Prospect.’ Speaking at the inaugural session, Madras University Vice-Chancellor S. Ramachandran said that the University was happy to be a part of this conference.

“In 1929, the first Indian language lexicon was published in Tamil by the University of Madras. It also has a lexicography project running for the last five years. I would like to request that the conference also strengthens its activities and think of areas such as e-journals and web pages. We would also like to see lexicography as a full fledged discipline in the university,” he said.

Director of the Central Institute of Indian Languages Udaya Narayan Singh said that there was a politics to lexicography. “What is taken in and what gets left out has numerous caste and gender issues to it … none of us can escape prejudices but in dictionary making you have to try to remain as unbiased as possible,” he said.

Professor Singh noted that a problem that surfaces in relation to dictionary making was the fact that they hardly evolve. “Passion is also lacking, there used to be a time when lexicographers chased after the history of a single word, not anymore,” he said.

Director, Language Centre, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Gregory James said there was a need more than ever to reach across continents. “Few European lexicographers are concerned about Asian lexicography,” he said.

He said that lexicography needed to evolve taking into account current developments in technology. Online dictionaries are taking over. But most of the online resources are only digital versions of those published in print. “If you want a bilingual dictionary in Chennai they will still give you one printed in the 18th century. Computerisation has increased ‘searchability’ but every thing else has remained static. Creativity in arrangement and a marriage of the technical with reliable information is the need of the hour,” he said.

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