Today it was announced that Chambers Harrap is to close in Edinburgh with the loss of up to 27 jobs. This is sad news indeed and comes exactly a year after the Lehmans Bank collapse. Not that the two are directly linked, but the bank's collapse set up a chain of events which we see filtering down to middle Britain. It also happens on the day that the new Dan Brown novel is published to some indecent discounting from Asda, The Book Depository and Amazon. At the last check it was down to £4.99.
Discounting has done untold damage to dictionaries where you regularly see 75% off the published price and there hasn't been enough thought about how to make them more desirable than a quick click on the PC. But I think the loss of talent that go into creating dictionaries will be enomous. Working on a dictionary is largely a labour of love and one that is carried out with as much thouroughness as possible. The reputations of both publisher and editor are at stake.
The internet is faceless. More importantly there is no one to write to when one spots an error or has discovered a new word. When you click at your screen, nobody is there to advise you with the random translation you have found. The other day I was looking at some Apps (don't ask, go to the Apple Store). One was a translation App. It did quite a good job at translating, but didn't show that there was a feminine ending to be used if you were a female. Nor did it distinguish between singular and plural verbs. Will anyone care?
A sad, sad day. And one that diminishes the knowledge base that we have.
1 comment:
Hear hear. This is a huge loss, and a sign of how bad things are. Dictionaries are one of many areas in which Scotland has always punched way above its weight, if not led the world. Now a huge chunk of it has just been washed away, and by the way the English press doesn’t even seem to have noticed.
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