Dictionaries are landmarks on the endless way of language development

How to achieve the goal so that they may nevertheless represent undistorted image of the reality?

There are number of lexicographic methods like proportional focusing, time sequence, spatial distribution, usage, which allow to reach maximal authenticity.

Another feature, which sometimes pops-up to be on the first line of importance for Armenian dictionaries, is the presentation of Armenian equivalents that fit best the lexicographic traditions of Armenian language.

In fact, Armenian language has a sharply expressed tendency of translating new terms instead of borrowing them from foreign languages. Nevertheless due to the small scales of language use and due to unwillingness of specialists to changes of terminology in their fields, the process of creating and accepting new terms becomes very complicated. And compilers of dictionaries begin to play an important role here, for choosing, classifying and sometimes creating and proposing new terms to the professional societies.

All Armenian dictionaries, especially bilingual, that were created after the independence of 1991 had to keep pace with rapidly evolving terminology of newly appearing areas, and to fill the gap of words and terms in areas that had restricted use in Soviet era. Our dictionaries focus on this in greater degree.

Another aspect of importance are phrases, set expressions, idioms of English, that should be translated with great care, and taking into account the context. Our dictionaries provide significant number of such linguistic material, always trying to bring forward correct Armenian equvalents.