The Persian literary monthly Bokhara paid tribute to Iranian Jewish lexicographer and translator, Soleiman Hayyim (1887-1970) at the Mahmud Afshar Foundation on Sunday.
A number of literati including Managing Director of Bokhara Ali Dehbashi, the director of the Academy of Persian Language and Literature Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, and Department of Islamic Sciences of the Academy of Sciences of Iran Director Mostafa Mohaqqeq-Damad attended the ceremony, the Persian service of MNA reported on Monday.
Hayyim had studied at an American college and his English was good so he worked as a translator in the then ministry of finance, Dehbashi said.
It was during those years he felt a great need for an English-Persian bilingual dictionary, upon which he usually spent 8 hours a day, he added.
“Hayyim was expert in finding Persian synonyms for English words and phrases, and he was highly interested in Persian literature,” Dehbashi said.
His two-volume dictionaries especially the English-Persian one has been the first bilingual dictionary over the past years and has always been a good model for the future lexicographers, he stated.
Mostafa Mohaqqeq-Damad also gave a brief explanation about Hayyim and his works and efforts in compiling the dictionary.
Iranian Jewish Rabbi Younes Hamami Lalehzar who was also present at the ceremony talked about the recently-published Hayyim Persian-Hebrew Dictionary, which was introduced at the end of the ceremony, and said, “Hayyim had prepared the preliminaries for the dictionary and his manuscripts are still available.”
It took about 12 years to complete the dictionary, he added.
Lexicographer Mohammadreza Bateni, also attending the ceremony, said that almost all the dictionaries by Hayyim have been re-edited and refreshed.
The ceremony was brought to an end by unveiling the Hayyim Persian-Hebrew Dictionary.
Source: Payvand News of Iran
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