The Authors’ purpose was to engage in long-range planning. This necessarily involved criticism, favorable and unfavorable, of specialized Dictionaires, and current colloquial expressions. Our aim was kept up-to-date by changes that took into account the most important new, cultural, political, diplomatic and commercial developments.
Our book could claim at the time to be the best practical “vademecum” for such purposes. Expressions were eliminated and new ones substituted. Alterations were made in other expressions, specially in Arabic. This Arabic difficult task was assumed by the Rear Admiral Dr. Samir el-Khadim and prof. Samira Bassil. They propose a new diplomatic terminology, before reserved to the French and now common to other languages.
It soon became clear to the Authors that the book had, or could have two functions: it was a reference work, and it could be an educational instrument at the same time. Although information is often confused with education, a moment of reflection will convince the politician, the diplomat, etc. that both are not always the same.
The Authors found that the reference objectives of this book are on the whole well performed. In short the Authors’ problem is how to make the present book some more than a “hunt-and-find book”, how to make it an instrument of education and information. Nobody wants to sacrifice the reference function, to the contrary.
