The study of human languages during the last three decades beginning 80’s, dictionary applications of various kinds — ranging from spelling and thesauri-check on a computer programme to hand-held dictionaries — both in print (called ‘pocket dictionaries’) or on a cell-phone, have become a common phenomenon. As time passes by and as the competition among world’s top few languages become intense, it is increasingly realized that we need a wide variety of dictionaries to be able to put them in appropriate fictions. The demands of ‘modernization’ that transform the lives of our languages (over and above their ‘standardization’) have been such that many of our languages must be put to use in many new and challenging functions. In particular, languages like Nepali face this challenge.

It is expected that dictionary tools will help us making modern applications of our languages. In particular, they will help in extracting the exact and authentic examples or uses — for many users and in most applications. For instance, a Collocations Dictionary that specializes in capturing co-occurrence patterns of two or more lexical items that are greater than a mere random chance or an author’s chance choice. These dictionaries help us to reproduce these co-occurrences, where the meaning cannot be simply deduced from the sense of its constitutive parts. Such tools can be of great help for orators and authors as well as copywriters.

The Government of India and especially the Ministry of HRD can only create an academic environment conducive to application-oriented research, but we require dedicated research and academic staff to implement them. Many of them want to help the smaller communities solve their problems in the sectors of health, education and m preserving and promoting cultural heritage and related social problems. The materials produced have to be sensitive to the legitimate needs of the individuals and communities with which they work. That is exactly what is being done by scholars like Dr. Sivaramakrishna at CIIL who has been working on a number of dictionary projects involving smaller languages.

As we all know, the importance of a dictionary is undeniable. With the advent of literature, words acquired new meanings as well as usage. To help readers to have an entry into the world of unknown words, the publication of dictionaries is essential. I wish the present trilingual dictionary a success among the people for whom it has been meticulously prepared.