The article is devoted to the determining of the volume, composition and principles of lexicographic description of Belarusian and Swedish proverbs in a bilingual dictionary, which is intended for Belarusians studying Swedish as a foreign language. The study showed that the optimal volume of the Belarusian-Swedish dictionary of proverbs should not be less than 500 units of the input language and 1,100 units of the output language. The dictionary should include, first of all, functionally active proverbs in the Belarusian language. The main principle for determining the composition of Belarusian proverbs and their Swedish equivalents in a bilingual translation dictionary is the “principle of completeness of dictionary units”, which most closely corresponds to the variety of requests of its users and various aspects of translation of proverbs. This principle involves a description in the dictionary of all formal variants and all synonyms of both the input language and the output language. In this case, the formal versions of Swedish proverbs should be described in the dictionary as separate units. To select proverbs of the input language, the typological criterion of their generality and specificity in relation to other languages, including Swedish, is also important. Therefore, it is important to include in the dictionary all universal proverbs and functionally active international proverbs, as well as the inclusion in the dictionary of all specific Belarusian proverbs (which have no analogues in European languages) without exception.
