Dictionary of Caribbean English usage Ed. by Richard Allsopp (review)

412 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 2 (1998) machine translation. Its substantial bibliography and its author and subject indexes are useful research tools in themselves. However, it cannot be considered a pedagogically-oriented introduction to the theory and practice of translation for the earlier stages of translator training. The book results from a lecture series given by the author in Finland in 1993 and is pitched at quite a demanding level although the claim that the 'individual chapters are relatively self-contained [and] can be read largely independently' (xiii) is justified. For this reason, it will be a very useful source of supplementary readings in advanced translator training. Also, teachers of translation, translation critics, and translators looking for some time out to reflect on the nature of their craft will benefit from it. They may end up agreeing, however, that at times W is not completely innocent of the 'pretentious, glutinous, heavily metaphorical or extremely abstract prose' (3) that he chides others who write about translation for using. Also, readers who know German will benefit more than those who don't from the fairly large sections of German text that are sometimes included to exemplify a point. While we should be surprised at a book on translation that doesn't include at least some other-language material, the growing internationalization of TS means that authors can no longer assume familiarity with particular languages by their readers. In such cases, interlinear glosses and/or literal back translations should be provided. While rejecting the impossibility of translation, W' s consideration of the text-related and translatorrelated problems inherent in translation in no way diminishes his appreciation of the complexity of the task. However, his balanced perspective always encourages a positive and hopeful outlook that interlingual communication is indeed possible, e.g. translation 'contains both culture-specific and cultureuniversal components' (90). Compensatory linguistic behaviors and adaptive skills and strategies can be acquired to enable the interlingual/intercultural gap to be bridged where necessary. W has little use for (sentence-based) generative theory which allows for a linguistic creativity that is both inapplicable and uninteresting to TS. On the other hand, modern cognitive linguistics is seen as having a most useful input into (text-based) translation theory and practice which should seek to operate in 'an interdisciplinary, cognitively embedded framework' (xiii). Such an approach will allow for the creativity displayed in linguistic performance to be given the central significance it deserves. W reminds us that the modern phase of 'TS . . . is still a fairly young and methodologically unstable field of research' (2), but this volume is indeed a most useful advance. [Robert Early, University of the South Pacific, Vanuatu.] Dictionary of Caribbean English usage. Ed. by Richard Allsopp. (French and Spanish supplement edited by J. E. Allsopp .) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. lxxviii, 697. This dictionary (hereafter referred to as DCE) is a groundbreaking publication derived from fieldwork and approximately one thousand bibliographic sources. It presents extensive data on English spoken in the Anglophone West Indies (including the Bahamas , Belize, and Guyana) and is certain to become a valuable resource in the fields of both Creole and English studies. Allsopp should be congratulated for finishing what must have seemed a daunting project when begun more than 25 years ago. The aims of DCE are different from an earlier landmark in lexicography, the Dictionary ofJamaican English (ed. by F. G. Cassidy and R. B. Le Page, Cambridge University Press, 1967). That dictionary established the goal ofhistorically describing the lexicon of Jamaican English, including both creóle varieties as well as more standard forms. DCE, however, is less devoted to historical principles than to language planning, seeking to establish a norm for Caribbean English while identifying some regional variation. What is identified as 'Caribbean English' is in fact a narrowly-defined representation of lexical entries and idioms associated primarily with 'acrolectal ' and 'mesolectal' varieties. DCE purposely excludes entries associated with 'deeper' creóle forms, and consequently, it assumes an uncomfortably (and admittedly) prescriptive tone (see xxvi). A should keep in mind that the bundle of features which creolists often consider as constituting the so-called basilect , mesolect, and ACROLECT are ambiguous at best and artificial at...