Petro De Smedt

Pierre DE SMEDT, rendered by him in Esperanto as Petro DESMET' (born 4 May 1934 in Sint-Gillis, now Dendermonde) is a Belgian (Flemish) philologist, computational linguist, lexicographer, musician (carilloneur) and mathematician. His wife is a Japanese university professor.
Among Esperantists he is known mainly for his study of Esperanto translations of the works of the Flemish poet Guido Gezelle and for a Dutch-language bibliography of Esperanto translations of Dutch literature from 1902 to 1972.
Professional life
De Smedt earned a baccalaureate degree in sciences and mathematics and later taught for several years. From 1965 till 1985 he worked for a computer firm in Brussels. Being very interested in music, chiefly in the carillon, he enrolled in the famous Mechelen school — where, after completing his studies, he served as carilloneur for the towns of Aalst and Dendermonde until 1999. At the same time he studied oriental philology in Ghent University and earned a master's degree in general philology and computer linguistics at the University of Antwerp.
Works
In 2004 his Nederlands-Esperanto-Nederlands (bidirectional Dutch-Esperanto dictionary) appeared. Well stocked with idioms, it is currentl;y the most detailed Esperanto dictionary of the Dutch language. .
In 2005 followed his Zakwoordenboekje (pocket dictionary), both Esperanto-Dutch and Dutch-Esperanto (Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo 2005, 123 pp. ).
In the same year and from the same publisher appeared his Dutch translation of Fundamento de Esperanto (Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo 2005, 135 pp. ).
His Bibliografio pri la TradukaÄµoj el la Nederlanda Literaturo (Bibliography of translations from Dutch literature), with an introduction by William Auld (Dendermonde 1972, 239 pp.), still the basic and guiding reference work on this topic.
He is co-author (together with Jozefo Horvath) of the 800-page Bildvortaro en Esperanto (Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo 2012, 800 p. ).
In 2020, Flandra Esperanto-Ligo published his series of Lingvaj defioj (“Linguistic challenges”), a series of ten e-books, in which he casts light on the origin of his dictionaries and idiom collections, as well as the problems he encountered.
In 2020, Flandra Esperanto-Ligo also published his 543-page book Oklingva Proverbaro (“Proverbs in eight languages”), which he had edited and for which he himself contributed the Latin and Dutch portions.
De Smedt wrote several articles on bibliographical, terminological and lexicographical themes, for example, in Heroldo de Esperanto and in national Dutch and German Esperanto publications. He is a regular contributor to the Esperanto-language magazine Monato.
Polyglot
De Smedt writes in and speaks seven languages, including Japanese and Chinese, has studied ten languages and understands about 30 languages.<ref name="personal"/>

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