Product Description

The Oxford-PWN Polish-English English-Polish Dictionary is a unique collaboration between Oxford University Press and Polish Scientific Publishers PWN. In two beautifully presented volumes consisting of 400,000 words and phrases, and 600,000 translations, it offers up-to-date coverage of today's language, including business, specialist and technical vocabulary, and detailed coverage of idioms, slang, and formal language. It includes thousands of example sentences, based on actual English and Polish usage, which show how the language works in context. With Polish material taken from the PWN Corpus of Polish, a huge databank of real Polish, and English language material derived from the Oxford English Corpus, a multi-million word databank of real English, this dictionary brings together the authority and expertise of two of the world's major reference publishers. The result is the most comprehensive English and Polish dictionary available; suitable for university level and beyond, and essential for anyone working between English and Polish.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #210355 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-15
• Original language: Polish, English
• Number of items: 2
• Binding: Hardcover
• 2944 pages

ITI bulletin, January-February 2006
A new generation dictionary based on the 'languages themselves'.It will delight anybody working between the two languages, irrespective of proficiency.

Review
"The dictionary is easy to navigate. One of the dictionary's best points is its vast semi-specialised terminology. The PWN-OUP dictionary will delight anybody working between the two languages, irrespective of their level of proficiency." (Kasia Pawlowska-Benda, ITI Bulletin )

Customer Reviews

A milestone
No bi-lingual dictionary is perfect and this, being a first edition, has a number of faults but it is a truly excellent and practical piece of academic work.

Before its publication the best dictionary on the market was the infamous Stanislawski which featured mistakes such as translating 'hamburger' as 'hot dog' (more embarrassing now that the Polish word for 'hamburger' has become... 'hamburger') and stating that 'slut' is a funny way of saying 'girl'. This book brought the Polish-English dictionary to world standard and it would be foolish to buy anything else.

The two most important considerations before purchasing:
1. It has been prepared almost completely by Poles and it is clear that it is much easier for Poles to use than native English speakers. For example, if you look up 'took' it will direct you to 'take' but if you look up 'bierze' it is not there to direct you to 'bra' even though the key word is twelve pages away and it translates as 'take' and is therefore an extremely common word in any text.

2. The translation gives emphasis to being useful for translators, so efforts are made to keep the flavour of the word in the translation (e.g. 'myszkowa' - lit. 'to mouse' - has its first translation as 'to ferret' rather than 'to poke around'). This is undoubtedly useful but as phrases veer towards the idiomatic or slang, the meaning can be rather skewed to preserve the literal meaning and (should you be interested) can make vulgarities sound hilarious rather than effective.

A quality product
The Oxford Polish English - English Polish two volume dictionary is an excellent production and is the one to have on your bookshelf.