ATU faculty member's Spanish<>Persian Dictionary unveiled in PLFL

Report by the Directorate for International Academic Cooperation –

(Source: ATU’s Public Relations)

On Saturday, 28 May 2022, a ceremony was held in the ATU Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages (PLFL), and the Spanish <> Persian dictionary newly published by Dr Alireza Omidbakhsh was unveiled. Dr Alireza Omidbakhsh is a faculty member at the Spanish Language Department, Allameh Tabataba’i University.

Apart from the author, the ceremony was attended by ambassadors from Spanish-speaking countries and officials, faculty members, and students from ATU.

In the opening of the ceremony, Dr Seyed Jalal Dehghani Firoozabadi, Vice-President for Research at ATU, welcomed the ambassadors from Spanish-speaking countries and said, “Allameh Tabataba’i University is the centre of excellence and the main coordinator of the relations between Iranian and Spanish universities. The Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages is also distinguished in the area of languages and literature in Iran, and the Spanish Department is located in the same Faculty”. He added that learning a language is like entering a new world, and the point of departure in this process is the use of dictionaries. Dr Hehghani then hoped that the publication of the dictionary contributes to the further development of Persian and Spanish languages in Spanish and Persian-speaking countries.

Dr Omidbakhsh, the author of the dictionary, then said: “Although there are innumerable dictionaries in other languages, including pocket dictionaries to multi-volume and specialised ones, there are currently four dictionaries in the world that are similar to this volume. Interestingly, all four dictionaries have been published in Iran, of which two are bidirectional, and both have been published at Allameh Tabataba’i University. The present dictionary is the first dictionary to have pronunciation guides for non-Persian speakers. We hope we can have support from university officials and representatives of foreign countries to carry out joint projects to fill the existing gaps.”

Mr Angel Losada Fernández, the Ambassador of Spain in Tehran, then added: “Two points are usually made about dictionaries: Some believe that dictionaries lead to the progression of languages. Others think they bring about stagnation in languages. Containing 20,000 entries, this dictionary is an essential sourcebook for tourists and business people, and it can even be said to be an important tool for the relations between the two countries.”

The United Mexican States’ Ambassador to Tehran, Mr Guillermo Alejandro Puente Ordorica, also thanked Allameh Tabataba’i University for hosting the event and maintained, “If languages ​​are the means for human communication, dictionaries are also tools that help us find out the different meanings and uses of words, thereby enabling us to learn and compare different languages”. He added that “dictionaries play a supporting role for authors, as authors use a variety of dictionaries as their sourcebooks. It must be admitted that very few universities have so far paid so much attention to the publication of such dictionaries. Spanish is a very rich language that is spoken in 20 countries. Some of these countries are more distant from others, and there are doubts about the meanings of some words. We really need dictionaries that would help us use the words correctly, and that is why the present dictionary would be so useful.”