Abstract:

In linguistics, onomatopoeic words, which constitute one of the main areas of sound symbolism, differ from other words in the language in terms of their phonological, morphological and semantic features. The selection and sequence of phonemes in onomatopoeic words often evoke non-linguistic references in terms of the harmony between sound and meaning. Therefore, each of these phonemes has semantic features that can give an idea about the characteristic features of the non-linguistic reference. Making definitions by paying attention to these features in lexicographic treatment of onomatopoeic words provides reliability in terms of giving the correct meaning and usage of such words in dictionaries. There is a certain number of onomatopoeic words in the vocabulary of every language. However, research shows that such words do not have the same phonemes in every language and that there are some differences between them in terms of structure and semantics. This situation regarding onomatopoeic words causes some difficulties especially in finding the correct equivalence in translation between languages. These difficulties are also present for both dictionary editors and users in bilingual dictionaries prepared in the form of giving lexical equivalence from one language to another. Dictionary makers experience these difficulties during the definition or matching (finding equivalence) of onomatopoeic words in two different languages, while dictionary users are exposed to this situation when searching what an onomatopoeic word in their native language corresponds to in another language or what a onomatopoeic word in another language means in their native language. In this study, by emphasizing the characteristics of onomatopoeic words, their lexicographic appearances in bilingual dictionaries and the difficulties encountered during their translation from one language to another will be discussed based on the data in the Redhouse Turkish-English/English-Turkish Dictionary.

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