When students of Pashto grew tired of having their seven-pound dictionary give them mistranslations of words they looked up, they found a simple solution - they wrote their own program that would handle multiple entries for several meanings of the same word.
"We got tired of the dictionary's never being accurate and constantly getting us in trouble in class," said Lance Cpl. Lauren Kohls, who has been studying the language for five and a half months and has the highest listening score in the class.
The infamous seven-pound dictionary, the only one available for purchase on the U.S. market, was originally produced by Russian speakers, presumably after the 1979 Russian invasion of Afghanistan.
"The dictionary was written by non-natives, so the dialect translations are not captured. There is no demonstration of the contextual aspect of the language," explained Dr. Basheer Laiq, who is helping the students with their dictionary project.
The original designer of the dictionary is Airman 1st Class Jason Lewis, who has diligently spent time creating the templates for the class dictionary.
"I hope I can design something that is free standing, and available for other troops to use once we graduate and move on," said Lewis, who explained that there is ample room in the program for multiple definitions and explanations for the words, should there ever be a disagreement.
"The problem is that the dialects vary from village to village," said Air Force Staff. Sgt. Matt Russell. "With this electronic dictionary, we can enter as many translations as we want, so we can literally have each instructor give their own dialect definition of a particular word."
Thus far the Lewis-Laiq dictionary contains approximately 15,000 entries. The Pashto students agree the electronic dictionary is much easier to use than the heavy traditional paper versions provided.
Social Sharing