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1. Article published in the Proceedings of the 2nd
ROASS Conference. (2009) Bacău: ed. Alma Mater, pp.
565-574, ISSN 1842-6409
A CRITICAL APPROACH TO ONLINE DICTIONARIES –
PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS
The increasing popularity of online dictionaries that we are witnessing nowadays is turning them
into serious contenders on the translation tools market, where they are well on the way to
outstage electronic and paper dictionaries. Paradoxically, quite often the predilection for online
dictionaries over the other types of resources is motivated by convenience of use rather than
quality considerations. If online dictionaries are here to stay, then remedial action to amend them
in every possible way becomes necessary. The solutions to the problems we found with online
dictionaries have ramifications that go beyond the practice of dictionary compiling, extending
into the area of teaching and training. A Critical Approach to Online Dictionaries aims to
outline some of the complexities of online dictionary assessment and development, and suggests
possible ways to optimize the quality of both the process and the product resulting thereof.
Key words: lexicography, online dictionary, macrostructure, microstructure, interstructure
Marinela BURADA, PhD, M.Ed., Associate Professor, Transilvania University of Bra ov,
m.burada@unitbv.ro
Raluca Georgiana SINU, M.A., Teaching Assistant, Transilvania University of Bra ov,
raluca.sinu@gmail.com
1. Preliminary points
There is a consensus about online dictionaries opening many possibilities to the end-users in
terms of both informational load and readiness of access to it. A clear sign of this is the fact that
widely-known publishing houses, such as Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press,
Merriam Webster, have promptly taken advantage of this flexible and resourceful medium by
supplying the market with online counterparts of their well-established paper dictionaries and e-
dictionaries.
A fair amount of attention has been paid to the merits of the online medium in general, and of
online resources in particular. As the more recent metalexicographical studies indicate (cf. de
Schryver 2003, Hartmann 2001, Nesi 1998, Atkins&Zampolli 1994), the research on internet
referencing largely falls within the ambit of pedagogical lexicography; what this entails is that the
intrinsic value of online dictionaries is measured by their potential to promote language learning
in a more effective way than their print counterparts. This explains why most often the strenghts
of the internet dictionary have been highlighted in contrast with the more traditional ways to
disseminate information, and mostly by using the print dictionary as a foil. In brief, these merits
relate to the speed of access, the illimited storage space, the lack of constraints on the amount of
information provided either directly or indirectly (via links to other internet sources), the
information updating possibilities, interactivity, and customizability.

2. Indeed, whilst such advantages are conspicuous from the vantage point of either the specialist and
the more knowledgeable dictionary user, the density and complexity of the input provided at the
microstructural level of online dictionaries and the intricacies of their internal/external access
structures (search paths and options) may leave the more naive public bafled and dispirited. It
stands to reason then that developing an online dictionary, no matter how comprehensive and
sophisticated, is bound to remain an exercise in futility unless designed as an effective, reliable
tool apt to serve a fair share of its target language/discourse community.
It may already be a truism that in a well-planned and well-executed dictionary the density of
information should, as much as possible, be counterbalanced by the readiness of access to it; in
other words, obtaining the maximum coverage and accessibility should be the main aims of any
user-oriented dictionary (cf. Jackson, 2003:76). This, one would expect, is the prevalent
metalexicographic principle undelying the process of dictionary making, and particularly online
dictionary design – the convergence point of two seemingly divergent areas of interest, i.e.
lexicography and information technology (IT). It is true that these two areas have been merging
for some time within the framework of computational linguistics; this is the case of, say,
language corpora and databases, translation memories, machine translation or computer-assisted
lexicography. Never before, however, have the two domains been so closely intertwined: given
their specificity, online dictionaries rely heavily on IT support not only in the process of
dictionary making (text parsing, compiling, metadictionary design, corpus building and storage),
but also with the final product (interface, interaction routines, management of data, networking,
security). It follows from here that, quality-wise, the cognitive input and the IT-support system of
online dictionaries are largely interdependent, so much so that the well-formedness of one is
likely to highlight the strenghts/weaknesses of the other, allowing for remedial action where
necessary.
With this in mind, the present contribution is primarily intended as an overview of the main
elements accountable for the limited effectiveness in online dictionary use; furthermore, drawing
on empirical data, it aims to put forward a number of possible solutions to problems which
basically fall under the scope of the microstructure, macrostructure, and interstructure of online
dictionaries and which, if overlooked, may significantly hamper the access to and the decoding of
information by the sophisticated user. Since at this time our research is still in progress, we feel
compelled to admit that not all the solutions suggested herein have as yet been field-tested, which
means that, for the time being, their validity remains purely theoretical.
2. The bigger picture
Integrated into a broader paradigm, the data provided below resulted from a wider-scale survey of
a corpus of multilingual amateur dictionaries involving the English and Romanian domain, at
that time available on the internet. This survey is part of a status report drafted at the beginning of
a two-year project funded by the National University Research Council1
and conducted at
Transilvania University of Bra ov by a team of academics and postgraduate students from the
Faculty of Languages and Literatures and from the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics.
By and large, the primary objective that we set out to pursue within the framework of this
research project that we nicknamed LEXICA2
has been to find the optimal solutions to the
lexicographic and programming issues we identified in the corpus of online dictionaries under
investigation. The research work has been divided into three main stages. The first stage

3. coincides with the critical approach to the aforementioned corpus; the cases studies conducted at
this point have been premised on the idea that the improvement of the encountered and/or
anticipated problems should be preceded by diagnosis. Based on these data, in stage two we have
put forward a set of principles, specifications and quality standards aimed at regulating the
lexicographical, informational and ethical aspects associated with the process of online dictionary
development; it is hoped that this set of guidelines or improved versions thereof will eventually
become the starting point of a reference system in the design and/or qualitative assessment of
online dictionaries.
In the spirit of fairness, let it be said that by suggesting this reference system we by no means
intend to challenge the existing metalexicographic principles; our research is meant to customize
the already established theoretical principles to the specificity of the online medium, and thereby
bridge the gap (visible at least in the Romanian context) created by the ostensible proliferation of
online dictionaries intended to assist in the interlingual transfer between English and Romanian.
The project is currently in its third stage of implementation: at this point, the objectives are to
pilot, field-test and consequently validate or invalidate our theoretical and methodological
assumptions; their applicability is being measured on an experimental dictionary created by our
team. The pilot dictionary is bilingual, unidirectional (English into Romanian) and its inventory
of lemmata draws on specialised texts broadly categorizable under three sub-genres, i.e. legal,
trade, and political.
Having said this, it is now appropriate to look at some of the possible reasons for the limited
accessibility of resources which should, by their very definition, be available to everybody and at
all times.
3. On the accessibility of online dictionaries
It will be agreed that when it comes to online dictionary consulting, accessibility refers to a
continuum bordered, at one end, by the dictionary’s inbuilt capabilities to supply information,
and by the user’s competence to retrieve it, at the other. Indeed, the intrinsic quality of a
dictionary will not compensate for the user’s lack of ability to access it, nor would the user’s
advanced dictionary or computer skills make up for the conceptual or programming flaws that
might limit the access to the information required. It follows from here that when accessibility is
partial or null the causes must be sought on the either side on the continuum (cf. Winkler 2001,
Weschler&Pitts, 2000, Tickoo 1989).
3.1 User-related accessibility problems
It seems that with the advent of the internet era and especially with the fascination exercised by
the new vistas opened by the online medium, the dictionary users were somehow left to take care
of themselves, presumably on the assumption that their skills in paper dictionary consulting
would serve them just as well in handling the new medium, and that, mutatis mutandis, clicking a
button was just the modern way of flipping a page.
Concerns about the mismatch between the input provided by the dictionary makers and the
competencies required by the end users have been voiced in the literature (cf. Winkler 2001, Nesi
1999, Atkins 1998, Wright 1998) but they chiefly relate to the language learners’ dictionary
literacy in general, with no implication that online dictionary consulting may in any way be
different or that it may require different/additional competencies.

4. But such considerations apart, one cannot help noticing that, in the case of paper dictionary
consulting, one and the same set of skills, once fully acquired, would tend to preserve its validity
across time and dictionary type. In other words, while we agree that the users’ referencing needs
may vary in time and across cultures, our claim is that, all things being equal, no different or
additional competencies would be required to gain access to the information in a paper dictionary
(or, for that matter, e-dictionary) now or in ten years from now, or whether the paper dictionary is
linguistic or encyclopaedic, general purpose or specialized, etc.; the way we see it, one good
reason for this is the high level of macro- and microstructural standardization and relative
stability across dictionaries, whatever their origin and scope. By contrast, given the dynamic
nature of the online medium and the heterogeneity of online resources, it appears that the higher
the potential for information supply, the greater the demands on the users, whose computer
literacy and referencing skills are often taken for granted.
Being able to discern the most appropriate source and finding one’s way in online dictionaries is,
as we see it, an acquired ability. With strict reference to the Romanian academic context, the
students’ dictionary proficiency and sense of discrimination should no longer be assumed de
facto; instead, they should be the result of explicit and targeted instruction in referencing skills, as
part of the more generic study skills necessary to cope with academic tasks.
3.2 Dictionary-related accessibility problems
The survey our team conducted on a corpus consisting of forty-two online amateur dictionaries
involving English and Romanian has yielded a series of interesting albeit worrying results. In an
earlier article (Burada&Sinu 2006) we argued that, judging by the number and types of
conceptual errors identifiable on virtually all levels of their organisation, online dictionaries must
be the output of computer specialists, clearly unaware of the complexities associated with the
(meta-)lexicographic domain. This conclusion was based on an inquiry into the macro-, micro-,
and interstructure of eleven general-purpose, free-of-charge dictionaries. The scope of our
investigation has since been extended but alas, the new evidence does uphold, rather than refute
our initial claim. In view of the space constraints of the present paper, what follows is a report on
just a few of our findings resulting from the critique of the macro- micro-, and interstructural
levels of the aforementioned corpus.
3.2.1 Macrostructure. Used by metalexicographers to refer to potentially three parts of a
dictionary, i.e. the front matter, the body and the appendices (cf. Jackson 2003:25), this concept
acquires new features when applied to online dictionaries, mainly because of the dynamic nature
of the digital medium. Thus, it is re-defined as referring to the interface of online dictionaries and
to possible interaction routines, such as the search options available to the dictionary user.
As far as the interface is concerned, the online dictionaries surveyed were analysed in terms of
their user-friendliness, which can be glossed as the degree at which such a linguistic tool supports
its users in successfully performing their tasks. With online dictionaries, user-friendliness is
influenced by factors such as the place occupied by the dictionary on the site, the amount of
information presented, the graphics and the structure of the general presentation.
In what follows the discussion is focused on the second factor, which refers to macrostructure in
the narrowest sense of the term, i.e. the list of headwords included in the alphabetic dictionaries
under discussion. In this connection, one main aspect that eludes us relates to the headword

5. selection procedure and criteria. Some of the dictionaries we consulted boast tens of thousands of
words but fail to include fairly basic lemmata like document, (a) semna, (a) compila, general or
(to) eat, (to) sign, commission, treaty, etc. On the other hand, quite often paradigmatic forms of
inflectional items are given lemma status instead of being niched under the main definiendum; the
same applies to collocations, whose lemmatisation principle sometimes remains obscure3
.
To circumvent such problems we suggest a corpus-based approach to headword selection, a
solution that we have been able to test during our research: thus, we have first selected a number
of input texts that we have taken as samples of natural data. These texts have been categorized
non-automatically into a number of predefined categories (legal/quasi-legal, trade,
politics/policies) and will be permanently stored in the dictionary database, remaining accessible
via the dictionary’s interstructure. Next, the input texts have been parsed in order to select the
headwords; to accomplish that, we have used a parsing programme developed in-house by the IT
group in our team. In this word-based selection process the features are the frequency of use, but
also the frequency of sense, in the case of polysemous items. In other words, the classification
task is based on the commonly used ‘bag-of-words’ approach, according to which each distinct
word in a text is a selection feature and the number of their occurrences in the text corresponds to
their value (cf. Sângeorzan et al. 2008).
A further problem in the parsing process that deserves particular attention here is the lack of
discrimination between stems proper (which are typically used as headwords) and coincident
segments found in other words (whether in headword position or part of the reference unit) : e.g.
for the Romanian headword tratat (treaty), a rather ludicrous result was 'barker: caine
latratator’, or casă (house) retrieved in the context of ‘carcasă’ (carcass). Other factors aside,
such problems may be accounted for in terms of inaccurate use of stemming, a popular feature-
based extraction method (cf. Janakova 2004) which may indeed prove more difficult to apply
with highly inflectional language systems such as Romanian, where stems may sometimes be
more difficult to recognize.
The other element of the macrostructure, defined by Burke (1998) as ‘the procedural structure of
the how the user goes about accessing entries’, is considered to be one of the most innovative
aspects of this new type of dictionary from the user’s perspective (cf. Nesi in De Schryver 2003).
Taking into consideration the search options available to the user, the online dictionaries under
investigation have been rated according to their degree of customizability, ranking from static to
dynamic. In this particular case, the dynamic vs. static distinction is used to refer to
customizability, in other words, the number and quality of the search options as illustrated by the
interface or by any additional guidelines offered on the sites in question. Despite of the huge
potential for shaping the macrostructure of online dictionaries, most of the dictionaries analysed
either provide only basic search options, or proved to be utterly static, in not providing the user
with any search options at all. This latter category resembles print dictionaries in that users are
able ‘to access entries by simply searching for headwords matching a string they type in. (…)
This macrostructure provides the functionality of the primary macrostructure of print lexicons,
headword lookup’ (Burke 1998). The lack of search options is indicative of the fact that the
advantages of the online medium are not exploited in full, and that the dictionaries in question are
nothing more than replicas of paper dictionaries.
One other point in connection with the macrostructural problems encountered during our research
relates to the inclusion of superfluous information which at best may be disruptive if not

6. altogether misleading. It typically refers to the insertion of ‘related words to’ whatever the search
target is, e.g. for the headword away, the related words offered by default were awash and awe.
In other cases, the dictionary provides by default lists of words preceding or following the
headword, the most frequent look-ups4
, and the overall number of look-ups against the number of
look-ups performed during the day. Given its questionable value on all levels, we think that this
kind of information should be entirely dispensed with.
3.2.2 Microstructure. This parameter refers to the internal design of a reference unit, in other
words, to the constituency of the definiens. To provide a clearer picture of some of the issues
identified in this area, we shall consider separately the left-core formal comment and the right-
core semantic comment (Wiegand’s terms, in Hartmann 2001:65). The formal comment refers to
the supply of grammatical information, including pronunciation, that immediately follows the
headword. It should be noted from the outset that, since virtually none of the dictionaries under
investigation explicitly defines its target audience and/or the general purposes, it serves we have
no choice but assume that those which do not provide any kind of grammatical input are
receptive dictionaries, intended for decoding (or comprehension), which would make the absence
of the relevant metalanguage justifiable. However, not including any formal comment may result
in ambiguity, especially with homonyms (cf. the Romanian word daca (sic!), quoted below). At
the other end of the continuum, in many cases the grammatical information included in
production dictionaries is either inaccurate/irrelevant or provided inconsistently. When present,
abbreviations of metalinguistic labels (e.g. noun/subst., fem., part.) fall outside the accepted
notational conventions; matters are further aggravated by the absence of any legend to explain the
abbreviations used in the microstructure, which may be offputting to some of less knowleageable
users. Considering the relative lack of space constraints characteristic of the online medium, there
is – we think - no real need for abbreviations; furthermore, the use of full metalinguistic labels
(including full sentences where necessary) would make the article more user-friendly.
Apart from one solitary case, the production dictionaries in question do not provide guides to the
pronunciation of the headwords neither by phonetic transcripts, not by audio support. Given its
questionable validity and usefulness, it is clear to us that the formal information is a perfunctory
component in the microstructure of such dictionaries: it gives them a professional facies but does
very little (if anything) in the way of boosting their target language knowledge or skills.
The right-core semantic comment covers input relating basically to the semantic and pragmatic
traits of the headword; apart from these, the definitional information may be extended with
collocational examples and word etymology. Apart from etymological information (present in
just one case), all the other types of input are represented in the dictionaries we analysed. One
conspicuous problem area is the conceptual organization of the semantic comment. One weak
point here is the lack of proper balance between the attention paid to the various entries, which
makes some of them disproportionately more developed than others. Further, in the case of
polysemantic headwords, the sequencing of their various senses relies on the alphabetic principle,
which, by indiscriminately mixing the basic/primary/proper/concrete meaning(s) with the
contextual/peripheral/figurative/abstract meaning(s), ends up by blurring the semantic boundaries
and relationships between them. Moreover, in the absence of usage labels and/or
contextualization, even the more experienced users may find it hard to grapple with the multitude
of contextual senses that a lemma may have.

7. As pointed out in the previous section, in some cases, the treatment of collocations and
paradigmatic forms as lemmata in their own right results in a plethora of irrelevant information,
cf. the Romanian noun casă (house), which also cumulates the meanings of iepure de casă,
greier de casă, rândunică de casă, gândac negru de casă with papuc (de casă), acoperiș (de
casă), etc., or the semantic overdifferentiation in eat out = a mânca în vizită (sic!); eat out = a
mânca la restaurant. Further examples of bad decision making can be the inclusion of
paradigmatic forms like the feminine past participle of a purta (to wear), purtată, translated into
English as Romanian folk dance from Transylvania5
, or daca (sic!), which lumps together the
nominal meanings Dacian (woman), Dacian (the Dacian language) and the meaning of its
conjunctional homonym, if (also mistranslated as or).
Apart from the conceptual organization of the semantic comment and the relevance of the
information provided therein, the quality of translation is another sensitive spot. We have found
that the reliability of target language renditions is a matter of degree: a good number of the
resources under analysis provide fairly accurate or acceptable translations; others, however, do
slipshod work, i.e. translating a lexeme by a paradigmatic form (e.g. a mânca = eats), one
paradigmatic form in the source language by another in the target language (e.g. purtat =
wearing), a masculine noun by a feminine in the target language (e.g. purtător de cuvânt =
spokeswoman), etc., and fewer are blatant cases of mistranslation (e.g. fed = sătul până în gât,
away = departe, fațetă, margine, muchie... etc., mâncător = man-eater). The weaknesses in
the semantic comment are sometimes further aggravated by misprints or by the non-use of
diacritics which unjustly levels otherwise dissimilar words, e.g. the Romanian noun casa (sic!)
and the verb a casa, which are inaccurately treated as cognates.
3.2.3 Interstructure. Following Burke (1998), we have adopted and adapted this term to refer to
the manner in which an entry (or comment) links to resources inside or outside the dictionary in
order to provide more detailed or extensive information about the headword. Interstructure is
clearly an advantage of online dictionaries which, unfortunately, appears to be largely
underexploited in the dictionaries that have been the object of our analysis. Very few of them
make use of hyperlinks to dictionary-internal resources (e.g. grammar practice, visual aid, etc.);
fewer, still, direct the search to resources on the internet, like other glossaries or topic-related
documents. As suggested by our own course of research, we think that at least as far as the
corpus-based dictionaries are concerned, the minimal interstructure should consist of at least the
input texts used as basis for headword selection, and which could provide adequate
contextualisations of the searched headword.
4. Concluding remarks
The foregoing discussion has highlighted just a few of the many problematic areas found with
forty-two bilingual/multilingual amateur online dictionaries during a case study performed in the
summer of 2007. Broadly, the problems we diagnosed are subsumable under the macrostructure,
microstructure, and interstructure of these dictionaries. Within the wider framework of our
research project, one of our main aims has been to amend the current situation by suggesting a
remedial course of action whereby the quality, reliability and accessibility of online dictionaries
could be improved significantly. Some of our solutions to the existing problems have been
formulated explicitly in this paper, while the self-evident, self-suggesting measures remain
implicit.

8. Relative to the design and development of online dictionaries in general, the modicum of
literature in this particular field seems to indicate that there is what might be called an ’amicable
divorce’ between lexicographers and computer specialists, with each side defending their own
part of the job and pursuing their respective goals, in a venture that should, by all intents and
purposes, be joint. As mentioned earlier, the cognitive input and the IT-support system of online
dictionaries are largely interdependent, which would suggest that the lexicographers involved in
compiling online dictionaries are equally responsible especially for defining the target audience
of their dictionary, whose needs and skills have to be considered in constructing a user-oriented
product, but also for shaping the contribution of the IT experts from a dictionary user perspective.
A more direct involvement of lexicographers in the programming could eliminate cases in which,
programme-wise, some dictionaries ‘seem to be designed for a restricted number of people that
share some special, esoteric knowledge of a particular system of numbering; in the absence of
any relevant explanations/guidelines, the rest of the users are likely to feel inadequately prepared
for data accessing’, showing ‘a blatant disregard for the user’ (Burada&Sinu 2006:47).
Considered from a much broader perspective, however, one problem that still lingers is the dire
need of metalexicographic input to accommodate the new realities of dictionary making. At least
as far as the Romanian context is concerned, (meta)lexicography is seemingly arcane knowledge
shared by a select few. This stands in sharp contrast to (what appears to be) the free-for-all
domain of online dictionary making. It stands to reason that since there are no gatekeeping
mechanisms to control the unchecked proliferation of such translation tools, and much less the
quality of the information they diseminate, it becomes the onus of universities to provide basic
and advanced training in (online) dictionary use, assessment, and development. Biased and
territorial as it may sound, one sensible countermeasure to the status quo in our context would be
to encourage the compilation and management of such products in the academic environment.
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ENDNOTES
1
in Romanian, Consiliul Național al Cercetării tiințifice în Învățămîntul Superior (CNCSIS)
2
the project’s full title is Competitiveness and Effectiveness in Intercultural Specialized Communication through the
Optimization of Online Resources (ref. no.: 15/929)
3
Situations such as these can, to some extent, be put down to the volunteer work, by various contributors outside the
profession, involved in the compiling of such dictionaries
4
which gave us a rough idea of its users’ profile

10. 5
a very low frequency regional term