Treatment of Pragmatic Information in the Chinese-English Dictionary

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the pragmatic information in Chinese-English dictionaries. A general survey was made to examine the status quo of the pragmatic information in the existing Chinese-English dictionaries. It was found that all large- and medium-sized dictionaries under investigation provided some pragmatic information. However, these dictionaries only provided the pragmatic information about the Chinese headword but not the English equivalent. The author argues that since the target users of these dictionaries are Chinese EFL learners, they should state clearly the pragmatic differences between the headword in the source language and the equivalent in the target language. Moreover, the cultural notes provided should be focused on the English equivalents instead.