Larousse Arabic-French / French-Arabic (Saturn) Dictionary (Saturne) (French Edition) [Hardcover]

Daniel Reig (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: French, Arabic

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1440 pages
• Publisher: Larousse; Ed. rev. et corr edition (November 15, 2000)
• Language: French
• ISBN-10: 2034513363
• ISBN-13: 978-2034513367
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,179,238 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars One of the best two!, June 27, 2009

By 

Yüksel Domanıç - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Larousse Arabic-French / French-Arabic (Saturn) Dictionary (Saturne) (French Edition) (Hardcover)

Among all the dictionaries from Arabic to another foreign language, I find only two worth to mention and review in affirmative. One of these two is the well known dictionary of Hans WEHR. My review for it can also be seen in Amazon.com

Larouse's Arabic-French dictionary is the second of these two best. Both have their merits and defects. Actually I use this one more frequently compared to that of WEHR. This is because this dictionary is more readable with higher face letters. The arrangement of verb-forms and derived words are more orderly and easier to find and hit on. Words are written with almost full signs of vowels, sukuns, hemzets. This is well and I accept as a merit. On the other hand, and may be because of this, no phonetic transcription is provided which I still deem as a deficiency.

The dictionary is arranged in the usual root basis for Semitic languages. Although and perhaps more or less inevitable, the hidden paradox in this approach is explained in my review for WEHR's dictionary. Thus the same difficulties shall be suffered also in using this one. It is my belief that this difficulty could be compensated to a large extent by citing all the irregular (broken)words (verbs, nouns and plurals) and those for which estimation of the root is rather difficult, alphabetically and then sending the user here-from to the root. This obviously is a painful task but is necessary. Both dictionaries take care of this point quite unsatisfactorily.

That the dictionary is produced by photo-copying is easy to understand. The reading difficulty which this creates is very obvious at the starting sections where the grammars of both languages are introduced. Weren't for this inconvenience, these sections could be quite contributing and useful.

The points expressed above apply only to the section of Arabic to French. The approach used French-Arabic section is quite strange and totally useless in my idea. Thus I don't find it worth of mentioning and reviewing. The producers of dictionaries should understand that theoretical-only solutions at the cost of throwing the user from place to place through the pages is not fair at the first place and should not be attempted at all, unless it is absolutely necessary.

For a foreigner learning Arabic, the problem of a fully satisfactory dictionary is the most prominent one. Although they are surely the best, this very annoying problem unfortunately remains still unsolved also by both of the mentioned dictionaries.