Forget the dreaming spires and the bicycles, the reason I've come to Oxford is leather bound with meaning. The Oxford English Dictionary has turned over a new leaf, having undergone a digital makeover. The second edition of the full version or twenty volumes has been online for ten years. And now gets more than 6 million hits a month from subscribers.
“We've always had a commitment to keep up to date with the best delivery method for passing on our research and our knowledge about the English language to the widest possible audience. A digital medium seems to be one which conveys that knowledge in a very, very effective way, on a very, very large scale.”
The Oxford University Press made 115 million dollars last year, selling 115 million other books. The Oxford English Dictionary has never made a profit in its 120-year history. With the success of the online version, where subscribers can pay up to 315 dollars a year, the full version of the third edition may not make it onto paper.
Superfluous, that is “not needed or required, unnecessary, needless, uncalled-for.”
But its digital destiny won't be decided just yet. Only 28% complete. The 80 lexicographers working on the third edition will need at least another decade before it's finished. By that time, it’s uncertain if there'll be any demand for the 1,200-dollar printed version.
"We need to decide whether to publish the print or not. Whether you do or not is just a question whether there is some market for it or not.”
The online version is updated every three months with roughly 250 new words, reflecting change not only in languages, but also in technology.
App, an application program.
"We don't put words into the dictionary as soon as they are coined. We fully wait five or ten years before we put the word in the dictionary. The word 'Vuvuzela', a sort of horn trumpet, they were heard when in the World Cup. So, some of you will be working on that. And their job will be to amass as much information as they can about the history of the words and to bring that to altogether to write a definitional basis for what evidence they have got.
The definition of dictionary has changed. With online versions, iPhone apps, and even Word of the Day email alerts. It's another sign of our technological times. We are having the ability to upload twenty volumes of the English language. It's something to blow your Vuvuzela about.
Ayesha Durgahee, CNN, Oxford, England. |