To begin with: I am not a lexicographer and when I undertook the task of what has turned out to be Saladin's English-Kurdish Dictionary, I was also "plunging into the sea of lexicography without having been first taught to swim".

It all started with The Diplomat, James Aldridge's novel, which I translated in 1984. The translation left me with a list of nearly 4 000 English-Kurdish key words, arranged alphabetically for easy reference. Sensing the acute need fo a lexicon, the list was developed first into a concise dictionary of 25 000 syllables, then into what I presume to be a comprehensive one with around 80 000 syllables.