Log Files as a Tool for Improving Internet Dictionaries

Abstract

In their advertisements, dictionary publishers often praise their dictionaries for taking into account the exact needs of the users. Until the beginning of the 1980s, however, no theoretical contributions on dictionary use were available, neither in the form of purely theoretical considerations nor in the form of empirical research. Since then, the situation has changed completely. Such a large number of user surveys have been carried out that it is no longer possible to give a complete overview. Nevertheless, this has led to no signifi cant improvement of the situation as the majority of these surveys are not related to concrete examples of dictionary use. The surveys, which have always been concerned with printed dictionaries, have therefore not contributed to substantial improvements of dictionary conception.In the case of internet dictionaries, on the other hand, technical possibilities enable lexicographers to monitor user behaviour in a different and much more precise way. Analyses of log fi les reveal exactly which lemmas and which types of information have been requested, and, perhaps more signifi cantly, which lemmas and which types of information have been requested but were not found in the dictionary. Furthermore, log fi les allow lexicographers to see the types of information which have not, or not yet, been searched for. All in all, log fi les may thus be used as a tool for improving internet dictionaries -and perhaps also printed dictionaries -quite considerably.

Revisiting Lemma Lists in Swahili Dictionaries

“…This was also reported in a study by Bergenholtz and Johnsen (2005). In our data only eight Polish searches among the top 100 are concerned with the sexual sphere -none among Swahili words, as probably users, the learners of the language, are not familiar with these words yet.…”

“…The frequency list thus remains the main source of data especially when compiling a small dictionary lemma list. Another study of Bergenholtz and Johnsen (2005) shows how to use log file analysis method as a tool for improving electronic dictionaries. They report on the sources of unsuccessful searches and user search behaviour.…”

“…By identifying missing lemmas we may improve the coverage of the dictionary, while other issues may influence our approach towards the lemmatisation strategy or the search method. For example, in their study based on log files analysis, Bergenholtz and Johnsen (2005) argue for including additional verbal forms, like imperative and passive in a Danish dictionary, or expanding it by adding some of the items identified as lemma lacuna. On the other hand, they did not find the problem of misspellings to be of an important nature.…”

“…Töpel (2014) reports on the unsatisfactory situation noting that the dictionary users and their actions are still unknown and that more research is still needed. According to Bergenholtz and Johnsen (2005), analyses of log files may be used as a tool for improving Internet dictionaries. They consider log files to be a useful supplement to corpus-based lemma selection since they reveal lemma lacuna, frequent misspellings, frequency of searches for multiword units, etc.…”

Lexicographical and Translation Issues in the Inclusion of English

“…Furthermore, there are recent studies and surveys that show contradictory results about the advantages of using online dictionaries over print ones (Chen 2010;Kobayashi 2007) or, as I said above, they admit certain "paper" features inherited by electronic versions (Lew/Mickiewicz 2013; Kwary 2013). It seems to me that, from a pure lexicographic perspective, paper and more particularly bilingual specialized dictionaries will continue coexisting with digital ones for some years, as Atkins (1996) and Bergenholtz/Johnsen (2005) anticipated years ago. On the other hand, however, I am not so much convinced Spanish publishing houses are presently willing to invest more resources in a product that faces such a strong competition from the Internet (Besomi 2013) and what seems to be even worse, they are even more reluctant to offer online versions of their most successful printed dictionaries for various reasons, mainly economic and technological (Gómez/Simoes 2013) including illegal use arguments.…”