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Past Friday 22 of April of the 2005,we have presented in the Library St. Miquel d' Esplugues the first Catalan-Serbian Dictionary..
 
Introduction

Within the concept of promoting the cultural exchange between the peoples of the Balkans and the Iberian cultures, the association Balkiber, already for some years has been working on the task to fill a vacuum, for us important, in the bilingual lexicography of the serbian and the catalan, that is, the lack of a dictionary. The reader has in his hands the final result of the first phase: the first and only Catalan-Serbian Dictionary. The second part, the Serbian-Catalan one, is being prepared so that it appears as soon as possible. At the same time, we want to arrive to Balkan public publishing an edition in Serbia and Montenegro. Some reader will ask: why to work in small languages while, more and more, everything is carried out through "big" languages? The tongue, as the most intimate part of a culture requires a constant cultivation of all types, to survive in the world of perpetual globalization in which we live. We believe that this dictionary can be a very useful instrument for serbian students and catalan speaking people that are being initiated in the learning of the other language and, as well, for anybody that needs a tool of consultation.
What is there in this dictionary?
Some 14.000 units translated with some 20.000 meanings: expressions and phrases, slang, child speech, onomatopoeias and interjections, toponims, scientific, technical and terms of other fields. The units are ordered alphabetically for technical reasons. Many easily deducible, derived words, have been excluded. Although it is a basic general dictionary, we have tried to offer a certain number of "encyclopedic type" words , trying not to burden too much the text. The phraseology has helped us to illustrate better some of the meanings, at the same time that has permitted us to give the figurative and idiomatic uses more usual of certain words. We have chosen the criterion of the Institut d' Estudis Catalans on the dialectal forms and thus we treat all the territory of catalonian speech as an assembly (the dialects are not indicated). As for serbian, we have taken a similar position to that of the Institut, as well as the attitude of Vuk Karadzic, who at the beginning of the 19th century, collecting linguistic material from all over the former-Yugoslavia, created then, and now as well, in many aspects, revolutionary Serbian Dictionary, normalizing this way a dynamic and modern language. Internationalized words of similar appearance have been object of a meticulous verification, reason easily cause confusion, like the word il•lusió, that in serbian (iluzija) does not have the positive meaning of enthusiasm that has in catalan, while maintaining the meanings as: error of the senses, deceit due to a false appearance and hope without a real base. The selection and translation of the words were done studying definitions of the catalan dictionaries, verifying the routine use through innumerable consultations with people of different ages, education and origin. Indirect sources have been avoided, as bilingual dictionaries of the catalan, to be able to maximally approach the real life of the catalan tongue. We expect that the laborious gestation of this project can contribute to open a little more the doors of the communication between our cultures. T. M.