The Pocket Oxford Russian Dictionary: Russian-English/English-Russian

by Jessie Coulson (editor), Nigel Rankin (Editor), Della Thompson (Editor)

Each half of this convenient pocket dictionary contains 30,000 words encountered in general, technical, colloquial, and idiomatic areas of the language. The Russian-English section is based on the authoritative Oxford Russian-English Dictionary , and the English-Russian section is drawn from
smaller Oxford dictionaries and grammars published in the Soviet Union.

Genres: Reference, Language, Nonfiction

844 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1975

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small but perfectly formed! This little dictionary has served me well for years. It's very portable, has both Russian to English and Russian to English sections, and has enough headwords to get by in most translation situations that don't require either dialect words or technical language. Mind you,it does include the Russian for Drifting Radio Weather-Station, and you never know when that's going to come in handy.

[Sardor Nazarov]

very good I think

[Igenlode Wordsmith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really excellent dictionary, amazingly comprehensive in its coverage for such a small volume ("as large and wide in range as its size allows"), and very cleverly and intelligently abbreviated and cross-referenced by as many means as the compilers could come up with in order to squeeze as much useful coverage in as possible. The hardback binding is small enough to fit into the palm of one hand (when trying to read on the train, for example!) and fan through swiftly with one thumb, and yet very durable - I got my copy second-hand in the 1990s and used it intensively for years and while the boards are a little worn around the edges from being carried in bags and pockets, the stitching is still sound, as is the thin, durable paper.

It is specifically aimed at the English-speaking student rather than attempting, like many dictionaries (including my larger desktop Soviet Russian-English dictionary!) to sell into both markets, and as such carefully cross-references all the irregular forms of verbs and all the perfective/imperfective variants, even where the head word occurs on the same page or only a few lines down; this is in practice invaluable. Individual prefixes are also listed with their general qualifying effects, so that the user can at least guess at the meaning of a compound word that does not have a separate entry ("If a compound word cannot be found in the dictionary its meaning may often be deduced from those of its prefix and its second element. To assist this process full and careful translations and definitions are given of many prefixes, especially verbal prefixes and other combining forms").

By means of this type of compression this palm-sized edition manages to include "nearly 30,000 words" covering both historical literature and modern (i.e, 1970s...) technological terns, while being in practice very nearly as good in its coverage as the aforementioned Soviet dictionary of 34,000 words, which is a clumsy and very non-portable hardback doorstop of a book. It's a beautiful example of optimised dictionary compilation done by humans for humans, rather than just by throwing as many computerised word lists into the database as possible.

What you don't get, of course, is any space for examples of context or usage: this is purely an assistance volume intended for rough and ready translation of unknown words encountered while reading.

[Megan]

The Oxford Russian Desk Dictionary by Colin Howlett (1994)