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Description
Just over a decade ago, a number of papers (notably Rundell & Kilgarriff 2011) reviewed developments in the application of language technologies to the compilation of dictionaries. They showed how the dictionary-making process had been to some degree automated, and they speculated on the prospects for further advances along the road towards full automation. Ten years on, it is time to assess what progress has been made. This paper starts with a brief overview of the state-of-the-art in 2011, then looks at developments in the period between then and now. Predictions made in earlier papers are reviewed: how far have they been realised? Several semi-automated projects are reported on, showing gradual progress towards a new approach to dictionary compilation. In this model — known as ‘post-editing lexicography’ — the role of human lexicographers is to post-edit (that is, evaluate and refine) the first draft of a dictionary which has been generated automatically and transferred into a dictionary writing and editing system. All of these developments have been called into question by the recent arrival of ChatGPT and similar large language models, which seem to offer the prospect of by-passing current technologies. Through of a number of experiments using ChatGPT to generate dictionary text, the potential for these AI tools to replace the current state-of-the-art is investigated.
