A STANDARD WORK
Harrap's Standard French and English Dictionary. Part II. English-French. Edited by J. E. Mansion. (Harrap. 635.)
WITH the publication of the second section of this dictionary, a task conceived forty, and actively begun more than twenty, years ago is triumphantly completed. The French-English section of Mr. Mansion's dictionary was published in 1934, and is now generally recognised as the most accurate, scientific and comprehensive dictionary available. Publication of the English-French section was planned for two years later, but with the appearance of the new edition of Webster's Dictionary and the Supplement to the Oxford Dictionary a further delay became necessary if advantage was to be taken of the new material contained in those works. This work of collation done, it may be said that the dictionary omits hardly a word or phrase which one might expect to find in a lexicon of purely English usage. It contains some material which will not be found in the Oxford Dictionary or in Webster.
The greatest advantage of this dictionary over any of its predecessors is in its range—substantially greater than that of several dictionaries expressly limited to them—of scientific, technical and commercial terms. So thorough seem to have been its listings of these that there can be few omissions to distress even the expert in any given subject. Americanisms are given a generous showing, though sometimes inevitably in renderings which say either too little or too much. There is, for example, no precise equivalent in French for the word wisecrack, the renderings given—bon mot, saillie, and cocasserie—all being some distance from the mark ; similarly, a number of words expressive of things which have no real equivalent in French life evoke explanatory and descriptive phrases rather than translations. Even well-known English terms sometimes require such treatment, and an idea of the editorial ingenuity and industry expended on them will be given by the fact that a special example, in French, has been composed to illustrate the word limerick.
Colloquialisms, both modern and traditional, and those phrases, so peculiarly baffling to the foreigner, which have their roots in half-forgotten legend, are admirably dealt with. Few national institutions or formal titles remain unmentioned, and there is an inclusive collection of those literary characters, like Pecksniff and Chadband, who have given their names to attitudes of mind. In short, this dictionary is as complete and as accurate as human endeavour could make it, and as its arrangement is masterly in its clarity, it takes its place at once as an indispensable standard work of reference. It may be doubted whether there is any work bridging any two languages to rival it in importance.
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