Encyclopedic knowledge in terminology and translation: How far should we go?

Translators need dictionaries that list terms in different languages, and provide information on the conceptual content of terms and subject matters, and linguistic information on the use of terms in discursive contexts (grammatical features, derivations, combinatory possibilities, i.e. phraseology and collocations). Encyclopedic knowledge has never been much emphasized in bi- or multi-lingual dictionaries. The present paper aims to demonstrate that encyclopedic information can be combined with extensive linguistic treatment of terms, and that knowledge engineeering opens up new avenues in dictionary publication. A bilingual dictionary in the field of retailing will be presented as example.