Comments on: Best free online dictionaries for translators and linguists

By: Globetrotting Texan

Globetrotting Texan — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 20:42:00 +0000

Thank you for this post. It comes in handy for the other globetrotting freelance translators out there!

By: Jon Stevenson

Jon Stevenson — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 03:48:00 +0000

Saluton, Benny! Jen estas du bonegaj vortaroj por esperanto:

La Reta Vortaro: http://reta-vortaro.de/revo/
Esperanto-Panorama’s Esperanta-Angla Vortaro: http://www.esperanto-panorama.net/vortaro/eoen.htm

La TTT-ejo de Bertilo estas bona ankaŭ: http://www.bertilow.com/index.html

Ĝis!
Johano

By: Daniel N.

Daniel N. — Mon, 03 May 2010 15:48:47 +0000

http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de is also a very good German-X dictionary (X = English, Spanish, Portuguese)

By: Tore

Tore — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:55:22 +0000

Best for English-Japanese-English:
http://www.alc.co.jp/

By: Eldon

Eldon — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 03:15:33 +0000

Cantonese-English dictionary: http://www.cantonese.sheik.co.uk/dictionary/ a very rare commodity

By: bathmateus

bathmateus — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 23:25:24 +0000

Wow it’s nice posting, I like it.
Bathmate

By: bathmateus

bathmateus — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 23:36:36 +0000

I loved your posting.
Bathmate

By: Dilasari

Dilasari — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 06:09:12 +0000

Thanks for sharing such informative post. It's very useful for me who still has to use dictionaries frequently during my blogging process. Best wishes to you.

By: Sascha

Sascha — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:08:50 +0000

I found this site useful for the German-English translation of Legal English terms based on Swiss law http://www.swisslegalenglish.com since it has many terms which other dictionaries like leo or dict.cc do not list.

By: Sascha

Sascha — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:08:00 +0000

By: Cainntear

Cainntear — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:01:49 +0000

They can only get better? I disagree. I’ve seen several examples of erroneous facts (in all domains, not just language) emerging on a website and slowly being replicated across the internet without an audit trail to allow anyone to unpick and correct them. Wikipedia and Wiktionary are two prime culprits.

The longer the false fact circulates, the worse it gets, so it “getting better” is not guaranteed.

By: Cainntear

Cainntear — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:01:00 +0000

The longer the false fact circulates, the worse it gets, so it “getting better” is not guaranteed.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:18:51 +0000

Very useful post.

I found this site to be very useful for specialist technical vocab (especially electrical). It has a lot of definitions that don’t appear in the regular dictionaries.

http://std.iec.ch/iev/iev.nsf/2decad0ea7d70589c12574490032b74e?OpenForm

I’ve only used the French so far but there seems to be a good range of other languages too.
.-= Liz´s last blog ..Immigrants: Citizens of the World =-.

By: Liz

Liz — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 11:18:00 +0000

Very useful post.

I found this site to be very useful for specialist technical vocab (especially electrical). It has a lot of definitions that don’t appear in the regular dictionaries.

http://std.iec.ch/iev/iev.nsf/2decad0ea7d70589c12574490032b74e?OpenForm

I’ve only used the French so far but there seems to be a good range of other languages too.
.-= Liz´s last blog ..Immigrants: Citizens of the World =-.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:42:12 +0000

For English speakers trying to learn Mandarin Chinese, I would suggest nciku.com . The feature I especially like is a free-drawing function that allows you to draw a character you don’t know in order to look it up (rather than looking through dozens of pages of characters). Very helpful, especially if you don’t know if the character is traditional or simplified.

By: Ed

Ed — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:42:00 +0000

By: Patk

Patk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:49:25 +0000

I like dict.cc too. For English learners, It’s useful even if you don’t know German: you can listen to audio recording of expressions.
And I think that they are adding new language pairs besides English-German.

By: Patk

Patk — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:49:00 +0000

By: benny

benny — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:31:10 +0000

You should indeed be VERY sceptical when it’s a professional translation. But most people who read my blogs are casual linguists so getting a “gist” may be enough for them
You are right that the dictionaries cost lots of money for a good reason, but I still think open source dictionaries are the way forward. You learn based on the translators weight in the community (in Proz) or the number of agreements on the translation (in MyMemory) etc. that there is a “good chance” that you have found the right translation. These systems can only improve with time
Most translators are right to use printed dictionaries, but this is not practical for me since I travel a lot and weight and space is an issue. I usually triple or quadruple check a translation I’m not sure about through various online sources before sticking with it.

By: benny

benny — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 11:31:00 +0000