Thursday November 29, 2007
Light and handy for young users
Review by FADZILAH AMIN
LONGMAN KAMUS DWIBAHASA
Publisher: Pearson Malaysia Sdn Bhd, 2008, 1144 pages
THIS smallish volume (10cm x 14.5cm x 4cm) was “written and developed with the needs of Upper Primary and Lower Secondary pupils in mind”, according to its product information.
 |
It consists of a Bahasa Malaysia-Bahasa Inggeris dictionary (384 pages), a Bahasa Inggeris-Bahasa Malaysia dictionary (714 pages) with its last 44 pages containing some illustrated biological information, illustrated science and mathematics glossaries, as well as BM-BI and BI-BM translations of some science and mathematics terms.
Before looking at the content of the dictionary, I held it in my hand to feel its size and weight, and decided this can easily go into the school bag of 10- to 15-year-old Malaysian pupils without taking up much space or adding much to the weight of the bag. This will encourage them to take it to school and use it.
I also looked at the name of the dictionary, and checked the name against that mentioned in the Foreword. It is Longman Kamus Dwibahasa. Since this is in Malay, surely it should use the Malay word order, i.e. Kamus Dwibahasa Longman. Its English equivalent would be Longman Bilingual Dictionary, following the English word order.
On opening the main body of the dictionary, I was pleased to see the entries in sky blue, in eye-friendly contrast with the black of the translations, definitions and explanations.
I was even more pleased to see that there were also synonyms and some idioms, and the parts of speech (word classes) of the word entries are given. It would help to have the pronunciations of the English entries indicated in some way, but maybe that will require more space.
I went on to actually scrutinise many of the word equivalents and definitions, and found them for the most part accurate and helpful. However, there were some inadequate word equivalents and discrepancies between the BM-BI and BI-BM dictionaries. Here are some examples.
In the BM-BI dictionary, the meaning of the word rindu is given as “homesick; longing for home”, with no mention of the common meaning of “missing someone”, although the meaning of merindui is adequately given as “long for, feel a longing for.”
When I looked at the BI-BM dictionary, however, one of the meanings of “miss” is given as “merindui”, with “long for” given as a synonym for that meaning of “miss”.
I looked for the word “unpick” in the BI-BM dictionary, and its meaning is given as “membuka jahitan”, which is reasonable, but no BM equivalent is given. I happen to know that there are two BM words for “unpick”: tetas/menetas and meretas, which can be found both in Kamus Dewan and Kamus Inggeris-Melayu Dewan.
Longman Kamus Dwibahasa, however, only has retas and meretas to mean “unpick seams and stitches” in its BM-BI section, while “tetas” and “menetas” are only given one of its meanings, i.e. “hatch” or “emerge from an egg”.
It is not my intention in this review to nit-pick, but in looking at a bilingual dictionary, one has to pay attention to the nitty-gritty of both languages. So while I am at it, let me point out the worst definition I found in this otherwise very good bilingual dictionary.
This is the definition of “Puritan” in the BI-BM dictionary. The word is defined as “ahli Protestan daripada Kristian di Inggeris (dalam abad ke-16 dan ke-17) yang menghendaki upacara gereja yang lebih ringkas”.
The first part of this definition makes no sense at all in BM. Surely, it should be “ahli sekumpulan orang Kristian bermazhab Protestan di England ...”
At any rate, do Malaysian 10- to 15-year-olds need to know about Puritans with a capital “P”? I don’t think Oliver Cromwell or the Pilgrim Fathers feature in the Malaysian school history syllabus up to Form Three.
Having said all that, I do recommend this dictionary as a handy reference book for the average Malaysian 10- to 15-year-old to whom English is very much a second or even a foreign language. With the switch in the medium of instruction for Mathematics and Science from BM to BI, the extra mathematics and science information in the last few pages of this dictionary will also be useful.
Source:
RSS
