[词典讨论] A highly personal overview on Hungarian CD-ROMs

Let the words come to me -- this is the title of an unforgettable and impressive book by András Sütõ, in which he writes János Arany was blessed with 23,000 words in Nagysyalontá, where he was born. In the Hungarian-English dictionary by László Országh, ten times more words are listed. How many words do we regular persons take into our possession during our lives? After a while, the words inherited from our family are not or don't seem to be enough anymore; we turn to a dictionary when we learn foreign languages or when we want to speak and write more beautifully in our native language.

A dictionary is a serious thing: its name radiates determination and confidence. A dictionary is taken into the human hand when someone has a certain goal, or when someone wants to find an answer to a question. A dictionary may not be edited or published by just anyone, and unprofessional attempts die out. Professionalism is inevitable when editing and publishing a dictionary. An incompetent person would fail when collecting the words. It is not accidental that the right to publish a dictionary belongs to the biggest scientific publishers. The buyer or the purchaser needs the assurance that is given by the publisher's name. He knows he can rely on the expertise and scientific knowledge of the editor, the printer, and other experts.

The new academic little encyclopaedia       
We are lucky because among Hungarian CD-ROM developers two extraordinary firms or companies have been present from the very beginning: MorphoLogic and Scriptum. The presence of an outstanding competitor firm encourages higher quality output from each firm. They didn't compete directly since they began to follow different paths. Scriptum together with the Academic Publishing House published the new academic little encyclopaedia, in addition to their dictionaries. MorphoLogic published its own dictionaries that were developed independently. This spring, however, they surprised the profession when both of the companies published Hungarian Word Treasury that became extremely popular in a very short time. This dictionary published at the Tinta Publishing House contains synonyms, idiomatic phrases, and antonyms.