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In his
search for dictionaries, he soon found that there were none for his area of
specialization. Even among his colleagues, the knowledge of automotive
English was quite limited. As a result, he organized English classes with
great dedication and in cooperation with a Stuttgart-based language school.
In July of 1972, the first book appeared, approx. 30
pages in length and put together on a typewriter: “Special terminology for
automotive engineering: German-English”. The author was WYHLIDAL. This first publication was quickly out of
print due to great demand among colleagues – it was accepted with such
enthusiasm that the 2nd edition, which was twice as thick, appeared a year
later. There were, of course, German-English dictionaries, but these were
intended for general language purposes. As far as technical terms went, these
dictionaries were quite inadequate, which, by the way, still holds true
today.
The idea
to found a publishing company and author a dictionary for automotive
engineering was born. As it turned out, this was an idea with a future.
The first
German-English/English-German dictionary was published as a 529-page
paperback in April, 1974. Along with the supplement, which appeared in 1976,
the two dictionaries for many years served as the standard reference work for
the automotive industry and its suppliers.
In order
to meet demand, Mr. Wyhlidal also wrote dictionaries in the
German-French/French-German and English-French/French-English language pairs.
A dictionary of abbreviations and acronyms rounded off the automotive engineering
product range.
Revised
editions of the classic WYHLIDAL German-English/English-German –
always expanded by special fields – have been coming out at intervals of two
to three years since 1991. As early as in 1993, the WYHLIDAL could be purchased in a database version for
PCs and PC networks. In 1994, the printed and database versions were still
offered in parallel, but in 1997 a CD-ROM edition was given preference to the
production of a new print edition.
In an
anticipatory move, WYHLIDAL expanded the dictionary to also
include terms from fields other than automotive engineering: Since the
language used in the automotive field does not only consist of special terms,
numerous general language expressions were added.
Supplemented
by a significantly increased number of key words from the areas of company
organization, sales and distribution, marketing, purchasing, law and
legislation, the WYHLIDAL is now a standard reference work
for the industry that has also become suitable for general use.
As its
entries, the WYHLIDAL also reflects progressive
developments in its user profile: In another logical step, WYHLIDAL appeared in an Intranet version. Today, the WYHLIDAL is also available as an ASP application on
the World Wide Web.
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