De svenska LEXIN-ordböckerna ur ett (ställföreträdande) användarperspektiv

Four dictionaries in the 'Lexin' series of 'immigrants' dictionaries' are investigatedfrom a user's point of view: the monolingual Svenska ord ('Swedish words', originallywith 17.000 lemmas), and the bilingual Swedish-Serbocroatian dictionary(with 17.000 lemmas) and the Swedish-Somali and Swedish-Vietnamese dictionaries(with 5.000 lemmas). It is claimed that the two bigger dictionaries constituteexcellent pieces of lexicographic work, while the smaller dictonaries suffer fromserious deficiencies. These two dictionaries are based on an abridged version ofSvenska ord, but the abridgement has not been performed in a professional way. Itis proposed that future bilingual lexin dictionaries should be produced by targetlanguage experts in cooperation with the authors of Svenska ord. Also, the idea of aspecial category named 'immigrants' dictionaries' is questioned. Basically, the principlesunderlying work on dictionaries for immigrants are the same as the standardprinciples underlying all work on bilingual dictionaries.