Filling the gap: a three-language philological dictionary based on contexts from authoritative sources.

This paper describes the methodology adopted for the creation of a multilingual--English-Italian-French--philological dictionary, designed to meet as far as possible the requirements of users in the field of philology, who need to use specific terms in a language other than their own. The project is addressed to graduate and post-graduate students, tutors and scholars, translators and interpreters for whom a glossary of specialised terms relative to a given universe of discourse is essential. The dictionary defines a variety of terms associated with philology and extends to other closely connected disciplines such as textual criticism, codicology, palaeography, epigraphy, papyrology, genetic criticism, etc. The three-language glossary is arranged in conventional form--each lexical entry listed alphabetically--and the English terms are followed by their equivalents in Italian and French. The Greek or Latin words from which many philological words have derived and frequently used to refer to a particular concept or phenomenon are also included. The project involves recording not just the term but also a brief contextualized definition in each language, accurately quoting the source, certified and scientifically reliable, from which the information was drawn. Alongside these definitions, a number of other contextualizations appear, also derived from authoritative sources, and different types of illustrations--e.g. manuscripts, stems, images of people and places--relative to the terminology are provided. The textual data and images will be included into an application (Alpha version) of the PINAKES project, released in March 2007, which is able to deal with different types of information--text, scientific objects, tables or graphics. This ongoing dictionary project, at present covering a total of around 1000 words, is constantly enriched with new entries, definitions and contextualizations in the different languages.