BJ - Sports and Recreation 2004

2004

BJ -- Sports and Recreation

Fussball-Lexikon: die grosse Fußball [sic]-Enzyklopädie [Soccer Lexicon: The Comprehensive Encyclopedia of Soccer]. Bernd Rohr and Günter Simon. Rev. ed. München: Copress-Verlag, 2004. 512 p. ill. 21 cm. ISBN 3-7679-0829-8: EUR 10 [04-1-258]

The first edition of this encyclopedia was published in 1987 under the title Lexikon Fußball by the Bibliographisches Institut in Leipzig. The current publisher acquired publishing rights and released updated editions in 1991 and 1993 under the volume’s current title. The completely revised current edition, which is available in paperback and reasonably priced, is international in focus, although there is considerable treatment of West German soccer as well as that of the former German Democratic Republic. Articles cover the main figures in soccer, including players, coaches, and referees, as well as specifics about each soccer team, including official name and abbreviations, uniforms, stadiums, championships, and web sites. Soccer terminology is also provided, with translations for the more significant terms into English, French, Spanish, and Portuguese. A chronology of the history of the sport up to 2003 is also provided. One drawback is that there are neither bibliographical references for the articles nor a bibliography for the regional championships and playoffs. [sh/bwv]

Wege zur Höhentrainingsliteratur: eine kommentierte Bibliografie = An Approach to the Literature of Altitude Training [: An Annotated Bibliography]. Jürgen Schiffer. Köln: Sport und Buch Strauß, 2003. 487 p. 21 cm. + cd-rom. (Schriftenreihe der Zentralbibliothek der Sportwissenschaften der Deutschen Sporthochschule Köln, 2). ISBN 3-89001-261-2: EUR 24.80 [04-1-262]

The author has compiled a bibliography of literature from 1964 to 2003 from sports and medical databases that comprehensively covers international research on high-altitude training for endurance sports. The focus is on English and German works, almost all of which have abstracts. Medical, biomechanical, practical, psychological, and historical aspects of high-altitude training are included to provide a very useful resource for those doing research on athletics, and also for trainers in practice. [mk/mjc]

Lexikon der internationalen Fußballstars [Encyclopedia of International Soccer Stars]. Michael Horn and Nadine Bieneck. Göttingen: Verlag Die Werkstatt, 2004. 351 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 3-89533-466-9: EUR 26.90 [04-2-509]

There is not exactly a shortage of reference works on soccer players in the German book trade, be they encyclopedias of international stars or of German players. This lexicon combines short biographies of a subjective selection of nearly 700 players—it would be easy to list the names of players who rate mention but are lacking in these pages. The greatest concentration of national stars, not surprisingly, comes with Germany’s 110 soccer players, followed by Italy‘s 52 and Brazil‘s 51. In all, 72 nations are represented. Most of the biographies, generally accompanied by small black-and-white photos, are allotted to male players (p. 9-299), while a separately alphabetized section is reserved for women players (p. 311-340). The more famous are listed under their “artist names” (such as Pelé, who is not cross-referenced from Edson Arantés do Nacimento) and enjoy the star status of longer, two-to three-page biographies. This feature is lacking for the female soccer players, who are given 65 short- to medium-sized biographies. [sh/rdh]

Yacht-Wörterbuch: Englisch-Deutsch, Deutsch-Englisch [Dictionary of Yachting: English-German, German-English]. Joachim Schult. 2d updated ed. Bielefeld: Delius Klasing, 2003. 496 p. 20 cm. (Yacht-Bücherei, 109). ISBN 3-87412-150-X: EUR 19.90 [04-1-510]

Joachim Schult’s Yacht-Wörterbuch is based on his German-language dictionary of sailing, the Segler-Lexikon, which was first published in 1977. Neither the Segler-Lexikon nor its English translation, The Sailing Dictionary, however, contained simple, easily understood definitions of all terms used by yachters. This led Schult to issue, in 1995, the first edition of his bilingual dictionary of yachting terms in English and German. The current Yacht-Wörterbuch is a second edition of this 1995 work, revised, updated, and expanded by the addition 5,000 new entries. Additional new features are a number of useful conversion tables, for example, of inches to centimeters, meters to feet and vice versa, meters to fathoms and vice versa, English miles to nautical miles and vice versa, and British gallons to liters.

In compiling his dictionary, Schult has built on the many years he spent touring the world in sailboats, during which he collected all the terminology that yachters from different countries use in communicating with each other. The current edition of his dictionary contains more than 30,000 entries covering all sorts of subject areas, from astronomical, terrestrial, and electronic navigation to tackle, boat-building, tides, racing, nautical weather reports, and more. However, a perusal of the dictionary forces the reader to wonder whether the selection criteria employed by Schult were really all that logical. In a dictionary devoted to yachting, there seems to be no pressing reason to include such terms as “newspaper advertisement,” “laxative,” “dentist,” “earache,” “sweat bath,” “hammer,” or “athlete’s foot.” The list of conversational situations that Schult advances as the framework for his selection criteria is so all-encompassing as to justify the inclusion of almost any word. Additionally, Schult’s attempt to include alternative terms, i.e., synonyms, for many of his primary entries does more to confuse than to assist the user. Because many of these alternative terms appear only following a primary entry word, and are not listed as primary words in their own right, it is difficult to locate them. Further confusion arises when primary and alternative terms are both listed as entry words, but assigned different English equivalents, as in the following examples: the primary entry “offener Hafen” is followed by an alternative term, “Tidenhafen.” “Offener Hafen” is defined as “ open harbor.” But when “Tidenhafen” appears as a primary entry, it is defined as “tidal harbor,” with no mention of such a phrase as “open harbor.” The primary entry “Nebel” is followed by the alternative term “Nieselregen.” The definition given for “Nebel” is “mist.” Then “Nieselregen” occurs as a primary entry, but here the English equivalent is given as “drizzle.” Yet another problem is that of entries consisting of two-word phrases. Instead of being entered in inverted order under the significant word, such phrases are entered under the first word of the phrase, for example: “schlechter Ankergrund” (“bad anchorage”) is not entered, as most users would expect, under A for “Ankergrund,” but rather under S for “schlecht.” Thus the work as a whole unfortunately conveys an unfinished, even provisional character.

In spite of the dictionary’s faults, it does contain significantly more information than the first edition, and thus will probably be considered a worthwhile acquisition by libraries that wish to keep their reference sections as up-to-date as possible. [js/crc]

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