Here you will find a sound and well-maintained list of web resources useful for anybody interested in languages and multilingualism and in particular for those who want to learn more about which links are helpful when translating in law, economics and finance or any other subject. The collection of relevant resources which almost invariably requires a great deal of commitment and effort is also available in a
| WordNet |
Lexical database — used by our translators: frequently — Created at the Cognitive Science Laboratory of Princeton University WordNet® is a large lexical database of English. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs are grouped into sets of cognitive synonyms (so-called synsets), each expressing a distinct concept. The purpose is twofold: to produce a combination of dictionary and thesaurus that is more intuitively usable, and to support automatic text analysis and artificial intelligence applications. According to Wikipedia, the project dates back to 1985 and over the years, it received funding from government agencies interested in machine translation. (Editor´s comment: now, you may guess which US government agencies have interest in machine translation. Hint: 3x3x3 "three three-letter abbreviations".) |
| BabelNet |
Multilingual encyclopedic dictionary, semantic network — used by our translators: permanently — BabelNet® - developed by the Department of Computer Science at the Sapienza University of Rome/Italy - is both a multilingual encyclopedic dictionary, with lexicographic and encyclopedic coverage of terms, and a semantic network which connects concepts and named entities in a very large network of semantic relations, made up of more than 15 million entries, called Babel synsets (likewise to the WordNet synsets, see above). Each Babel synset represents a given meaning and contains all the synonyms which express that meaning in a range of different languages. BabelNet 4.0 covers 284 languages and is obtained from the automatic integration of WordNet (see the top), Open Multilingual WordNet (wordnets in a variety of languages, all linked to the mentioned Princeton Wordnet of English), Wikipedia (see below) and OmegaWiki (a large collaborative multilingual dictionary). Additionally, it contains translations obtained from sense-annotated sentences. The correctness of the WordNet-Wikipedia mapping in BabelNet 3.0 has been estimated at around 91% on open-text words. The website provides: a web interface for looking up terms, translations and definitions, an explorer for browsing the BabelNet semantic network, statistics, a bibliography and a download page. |
| Yago |
Multilingual semantic knowledge base — used by our translators: rarely — YAGO (Yet Another Great Ontology) developed at the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Saarbrucken/Germany is a huge semantic knowledge base, derived from Wikipedia (see below), WordNet (see the top) and GeoNames (see the bottom). What is an ontology? According to Wikipedia: 'ontology basically deals with questions concerning what entities exist or may be said to exist, and how such entities may be grouped, related within a hierarchy, and subdivided according to similarities and differences' and 'in computer science and information science, an ontology is a formal naming and definition of the types, properties, and interrelationships of the entities that really or fundamentally exist for a particular domain of discourse. It is thus a practical application of philosophical ontology, with a taxonomy'. As of March 2015 YAGO 3.0 is operational which fuses multilingual information with the English WordNet to build one coherent knowledge base. In comparison to the former YAGO 2.0 it is consiting of a multitude of entities, like persons, organizations, cities, etc., containing many hundreds of million facts about these entities. Two of the most prominent applications that are featured by YAGO are DBpedia (see our parallel German and Dutch pages) and the IBM Watson system ("cognitive computing"). Yago provides for an ontology browser (see the link) along with a graph browser (accessible via the homepage). |
| Genius |
Collaborative semantic annotation platform — used by our translators: occasionally — 'Only a handful of people know that the web browser's big missing feature - the feature that was supposed to be in from the start but didn't make it - is the ability to annotate any page on the Internet'. Formerly known as Rap Genius this is an "interactive guide to human culture", breaking down text with line-by-line annotations, added and edited by anyone in the world. "Have you ever been confused by a song's lyrics? Had trouble understanding a line from Shakespeare, the Bible or a leading court decision? With Genius, you never have to worry about this or anything else ever again. Genius breaks down lyrics and literature and the news with line-by-line annotations, added and edited by countless users." Texts on Genius are living documents. Over time, they transform into definitive guides as people from around the world add bits of knowledge to them.. |
| Google |
Global search engine — used by our translators: permanently — If you do not want to be profiled - and there is good cause not to be - you should have every reason to be reluctant against any "personalized search" while using datenkrake Google. It must be said, though, that Google is the source within the World Wide Web. Key issue to understand the countless search opportunities which are offered by this widely known and used engine in order to choose the right words and phrases is the proficient handling of the inverted comma and wildcard functionality. These functionalities are indispensable for every linguist - not only expert legal and financial translators - most notably when writing in a non-native language since they are required in order to use Google´s vast databases in a corpus search like manner. (Editor´s note: speaking about corpus searching see the links further below within section 'Sources for translators - common monolingual'.) One more thing: See Google as a beast, a "creature" that wants to be nurtured. Don't be evil? Forget about it! Up to a certain extent it is up to you in your capacity as food mixer to decide about the compilation of the diet you give the beast to eat. My recommendation: Feed it as much as you can with the most conceivable dietary variety, so that at the end of the day it does not know any more what acutually it has eaten. |
| Start |
Natural language system — used by our translators: ocasionally — START (SynTactic Analysis using Reversible Transformations) is a software system designed to answer questions that are posed to it in natural language. START parses incoming questions, matches the queries created from the parse trees against its knowledge base and presents the appropriate information segments to the user. In this way, START provides untrained users with speedy access to knowledge that in many cases would take an expert some time to find. A key technique called natural language annotation helps START connect information seekers to information sources. This technique employs natural language sentences and phrases (annotations) as descriptions of content that are associated with information segments at various granularities. An information segment is retrieved when its annotation matches an input question. This method allows START to handle all variety of media, including text, diagrams, images, video and audio clips, data sets, Web pages, and others. |
| Wikidata |
Free knowldge base — used by our translators: up till now scarcely — Wikidata is a free linked database that can be read and edited by both humans and machines. Wikidata acts as central storage for the structured data of its Wikimedia sister projects including Wikipedia (see the next link), Wikivoyage, Wikisource, and others. Wikidata also provides support to many other sites and services beyond just Wikimedia projects! The content of Wikidata is available under a free license, exported using standard formats, and can be interlinked to other open data sets on the linked data web.) |
| Wikipedia |
Multilingual online encyclopedia — used by our translators: permanently — Although its integrity, objectivity, validity, reliability, generalizability, utilizability and completness may be questioned in one way or the other, Wikipedia, as a collaboratively written and edited multilingual, free Internet encyclopedia might be described as an utmost valuable source, not exclusively but particularly and especially for language professionals. Based on the assumption that the World Wide Web is more than a commercial platform, Wikipedia as the largest and most popular general reference work on the Internet - ranking sixth globally among all websites - provides 30 million articles in 287 languages. Featuring a cross-structure, horizontally ordered contents are vertically accessible in different (formal and informal) languages (and dialects), it turns out to be a remarkable and eminently useful tool for every legal translator as different conceptual descriptions within (dis-)similar jurisdictions may be compared with each other in order to choose the most suitable translation. |
| Wolfram Alpha |
Computational knowledge engine — used by our translators: occasionally — Based on a software suite called Mathematica, which is a computational platform or toolkit that encompasses computer algebra, symbolic and numerical computation, visualization, and statistics capabilities, Wolfram Alpha is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, rather than providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer as a search engine may do. You can submit queries and computations in the text box and Wolfram Alpha then computes answers from a knowledge base of curated, structured data. This means that it can answer just about anything, artificial intelligence-style! Try putting in word properties, word puzzles or transliterations, just to name a few of the countless oportunities - words & linguistics is just one topic out of many that are offered - Wolfram will come up with something interesting. |
| Encyclo |
Lexical search engine — used by our translators: permanently — Encyclo offers a practical rather than academic approach for (monolingual) lexical database search. The Dutch operator describes the service as a search engine for terms and definitions. However, the brand "Encyclo" is somehow misleading since it is not an encyclopedia in the real sense of the word. Why would it be helpful anyway? As part of the so-called Deep Web, there are glossaries and terminology-lists out there that cannot be indexed by standard search engines such as Google and Yahoo! due to special formatting and/or lack of crawlability. Moreover, various experts once starting to create such a technical database have lost the passion to proceed and up to a certain extent they nevertheless render a valuable source. |
| Linguee |
Editorial dictionary and translation search engine — used by our translators: permanently — According to the German operator, Linguee is a unique translation tool combining an editorial dictionary and a search engine with which you can search through hundreds of millions of bilingual texts for words and expressions. Compared to traditional online dictionaries, Linguee contains about 1,000 times more translated texts, which are displayed in full sentences. Linguee will show even for rare expressions or specific technical terms. So, simply spoken, Linguee can be seen as a huge searchable parallel corpus but the Linguee corpus is many times larger than any other parallel corpus, and Linguee gives you an indication of trustworthiness of the entries it displays. |
| Context Reverso |
Contextual dictionary and translation search engine — used by our translators: occasionally — Similar in concept to the aforementioned one is the Reverso contextual dictionary and translation search engine (Editor´s note: speaking about 'Reverso' see the 'Promt Translator' further below in this section.) "Find the translation in context for millions of words and expressions: Type a word or several words in the translation search engine and instantly get a variety of examples of use taken from real-life situations (movie dialogs, news articles, etc.) and from official documents. There is a certain limitation, however. Although Reverso is doing its best to offer you quality results, there can still be some inaccurate translations, concordance problems between the source text and its translation (also known as 'alignment problems'), or typos" - according to the description of the serviceprovider. (Editor´s comment: from what I have heard by some colleagues this source turns out to be especially valuable for English-Spanish and vice versa translations, whereas for other (common) language combinations, Linguee is clearly preferred as an information and reference source for daily work.) |
Ludwig |
Online linguistic search engine — used by our translators: occasionally — "Find the perfect English sentence to express each one of your ideas and write like a pro". Yet another thing in combining education, machine learning, big data and smooth user experience. Although the tool looks much like a corpus-search-engine (Editor´s note: see the 'Sources' category/section further below.) the thing to know about Ludwig is that users must take an active role. Online since February 2016, Ludwig is a linguistic search engine designed to help people write correct English sentences. The company, headquartered in Catania, Italy, was started by a group of researchers and engineers from Sicily who have worked in a number of universities in the U.S., Norway, Germany and Spain. |
| Roget´s Thesaurus |
Thesaurus tool — used by our translators: frequently — 'The man is not wholly evil - he has a Thesaurus in his cabin' (J. M. Barrie´s children´s book; "Peter Pan" in his description of "Captain Hook".) So, what actually is a thesaurus, you might ask. In general usage, a thesaurus is a reference work that lists words grouped together according to similarity of meaning (containing synonyms and sometimes antonyms), in contrast to a dictionary, which provides definitions for words, and generally lists them in alphabetical order. To quote Peter Mark Roget, an exceptional, outstanding personality in many ways and aspects, not only as a philologist, scientist, physician but most notalby as an architect of the best known thesaurus in the English language: 'the main purpose of such reference works is to help the user to find the word, or words, by which [an] idea may be most fitly and aptly expressed'. The name Roget soon became a virtual synonym for the word "synonym" and for those who use Roget´s Thesaurus it is one of the most important books ever printed. (Editor´s note: see also 'The Historical Thesaurus of English' (HTE) in the 'Sources' category further below.) |
| Wordhippo |
Thesaurus tool — used by our translators: rarely — Wordhippo offers an extensive resource list, including synonyms, antonyms, word meaning (with example sentences), pronunciation, and rhyming words. Just type in a word in the top search bar of the website and select which resource you want to use. There is also a word form generator that will list all the different forms of a word, such as the plural form, the noun form, the verb form, and even different tenses for verbs. All of these word resource tools complement each other to give the website user a greater understanding of vocabulary. Word Hippo is most useful for English words, but some resource sections have other languages such as French and German. |
| Eurovoc |
Multilingual thesaurus — used by our translators: occasionally — To once again quote Peter Mark Roget: 'In order to communicate one´s exact intention or one´s precise meaning, the Thesaurus, being a list of synonyms or verbal equivalents, is a necessary tool'. So here we go. EuroVoc is a multilingual, multidisciplinary thesaurus covering the activities of the EU, the European Parliament in particular. It contains terms in 23 EU languages, managed by the European Unions' Publications Office, which moved forward to ontology-based thesaurus management and semantic web technologies conformant to W3C recommendations as well as latest trends in thesaurus standards. |
| Just The Word |
Collocations, concordancing and synonyms (finding) tool (thesaurus) — used by our translators: occasionally — A collocation is a sequence of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance and a concordance is an alphabetical list of the principal words used in a book or body of work, listing every instance of each word with its immediate context (because of the time, difficulty, and expense involved in creating a concordance in the pre-computer era, only works of special importance, such as the Vedas or the Bible, had concordances prepared for them) This said, JustTheWord is a completely new kind of aid to help you with writing English and choosing just the word. If English is your first language, JustTheWord can help you express that elusive idea with le mot juste. If English is your second or third language - translator's, here we go - JustTheWord can justify your choice of words or suggest improvements. And JustTheWord knows about some common errors made by speakers of your mother tongue. This service makes use of the British National Corpus (BNC) (Editor´s note: see the following section 'sources for translators - common monolingual') and from Wordle, a so called word clouds generator. |
| Stringnet |
Lexico-grammatical knowledgebase — used by our translators: occasionally — As an an English lexico-grammatical knowledgebase consisting of multiword patterns of word behavior StringNet is a computational resource for discovering and investigating linguistic constructions. These multiword patterns of word behavior are represented by what the operators call hybrid n-grams (Editor´s note: see also the 'Google Ngram Viewer' in the section subsumed under the header 'Varia' at the bottom.) and their relations to each other. Currently, StringNet contains about two billion hybrid n-grams extracted from the British National Corpus (BNC) (Editor´s note: once again, see the following section 'sources for translators - common monolingual'). Now, you ca use the StringNet Navigator as an user-interface for querying and navigating StringNet. It takes queries of one or more words submitted to its query box and provides a list of patterns in which the query word is conventionally used (or, in the case of multi-word queries, patterns in which the query words conventionally cooccur). Each hybrid n-gram listed in search results is accompanied by a variety of related links and information. |
| DeepL |
Autotranslator — used by our translators: frequently — As an auto translation service DeepL Translator is launched in August 2017 by the German DeepL GmbH as a kind of advanced development of Linguee (see further above). Currently (as of June 2018) the service supports translations between seven major European languages. DeepL translations sound more natural in comparison to other major translation services (see below) using a technique (algorithm) called 'bilingual evaluation understudy' for evaluating the quality of text which has been machine-translated from one natural language to another in order to assess the translation quality. Responds to a variety of queries show (translation) results more precise and nuanced at a speed equal to that of its competitors; as there are: |
| Google Translate |
Autotranslator — used by our translators: frequently — Google´s free online language translation service based on statistical analysis rather than traditional rule-based analysis algorithms. A method called statistical machine translation, pioneered by the computer scientist Franz Josef Och, then head of Google´s machine translation development team. Statistical machine translation tries to generate translations using statistical methods based on bilingual text corpora. Where such corpora are available - see our links further below - good results can be achieved, translating similar texts. But such corpora are rare for many language pairs. While for several years Google used rule-based and transfer-based machine translation it switched to a statistical translation method in October 2007. And, as of November 2016 it announced a further improvement in autotranslation technology, the utilisation of what is called neural machine translation, using a large artificial neural network capable of deep learning (a class of machine learning algorithms). |
| Bing Translator |
Autotranslator — used by our translators: occasionally — Formerly known as Yahoo Babel Fish this is a web-based machine translation application, initially named after a fictional animal. Based on conventional computational linguistics, Babel Fish translation technology is provided by Systran®, whose technology also powers a number of other sites and portals. The way in which such a rule-based or transfer-based machine translation system work is by applying a sets of linguistic rules which are defined as correspondences between the structure of the source language and that of the target language. The proces is performed in three stages: analysis, transfer, generation. The first stage involves analysing the input text for morphology and syntax, and sometimes semantics, to create an internal representation to be transfered into the target language. The translation is generated from this representation using both bilingual dictionaries and grammatical rules. It is possible with this translation strategy to obtain fairly high quality translations, although this is highly dependent on the language pair in question, for example the distance between the two. |
| Promt Translator |
Autotranslator — used by our translators: occasionally — Promt (Project of machine translation) is a Russian developer of machine translation systems. Founded in St.Petersburg in 1991 by the former employees of the Laboratory of Engineering Linguistics of Herzen University, PROMT currently provides a hybrid technology of translation, leveraging the strengths of statistical machine translation and rule-based translation methodologies, featuring a number of products of the French company Softissimo under the brand Reverso ('Free online translator and dictionary'). Now, interestingly enough, Reverso in its own capacity as online language solution provider is driven by a project called Faust (Feedback analysis for user adaptive statistical translation). Faust´s academic partners are the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, UK, the Center for Language and Speech Technologies and Applications (TALP) of the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain and the Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics of the Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Funded by the EU with 3.76 Million Euro, Faust describes its objective as to "develop interactive machine translation (MT) systems which adapt rapidly and intelligently in response to user feedback". |
| Yandex Translate |
Autotranslator — used by our translators: occasionally — As a part of the Yandex search engine this is a Russian machine translation system either. Yandex Translate uses a self-learning statistical machine translation solution. Originally based on the PROMT technology (see the foregoing link) it has gone its own way in recent years. The service was launched in 2011 and only available in three languages: Russian, English and Ukrainian, with a limit of 10,000 characters. As of January 2016 the service is available for translations between not less than 67 languages, while the translation direction is determined automatically. |
| Grammarly |
Automated proofreader / online grammar and spelling checker — used by our translators: occasionally — "Join a community of millions of writers" According to the oprerator, a San Francisco based company, the tool checks for more than 400 types of spelling, grammar,
and punctuation errors, enhances vocabulary usage, and suggests citations. Grammarly's algorithms flag potential issues in the text and suggest context-specific corrections for grammar, spelling, and vocabulary. Grammarly explains the reasoning behind each correction, so you can make an informed decision about whether, and how, to correct an issue. There is also a free browser extension for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox that corrects critical grammar and spelling errors |
| Edit- Saurus |
Language checking tool — used by our translators: rarely — The website was created by Tyler Walters. The purpose of this website is to highlight potential pitfalls in your writing and encourage good habits. Few of the things this tool highlights are hard and fast rules. Try to look at the output as a chance to think about your writing choices and see if there are areas for improvement. This website is not infallible. It will miss things and there will be false positives in the results from time to time. This is not a replacement for careful editing. That said, the operator hopes this provides useful feedback to you. |
Language- Tool |
Open source, cross-platform tool for checking spelling, grammar and style — used by our translators: occasionally — LanguageTool is an Open Source proofreading program for English, French, German, Polish, and more than 20 other languages. 'It finds many errors that a simple spell checker cannot detect - and several grammar problems'. LanguageTool can be used as an extension in LibreOffice/OpenOffice, Firefox and Thunderbird. (Editor´s comment: for us, in the legal profession LanguageTool may turn out to be a remarkable help for converting flatulent legal phrases into plain language, if necessary, hence required to do so.) |
Writefull- App |
Open source app for checking spelling, grammar and style — used by our translators: occasionally — Writefull is an app that gives feedback on your writing by checking your text against databases of correct language. You can use Writefull in any writing tool - from MS Word to Gmail. The source uses Natural Language Processing and Google Books, Google Web, Google Scholar and Google news as language database sources to give you feedback. And, yes, it's free. The priority of the operator is "building the product that fits your needs".) |
| GtGaW |
Grammar handbook and writing guide — used by our translators: rarely — Speaking about grammar, the "Guide to Grammar and Writing" had have been developed as one of the first language related Internet resources in 1996 by the English professor Charles Darling to help his students write reports and research papers. The Guide to Grammar and Writing rapidly took on a life of its own, mushrooming into a wildly popular site, with upwards of 30,000 hits per day from all over the world. |
| MEG |
Grammar guide — used by our translators: occasionally — Another pioneer in language related Internet resources, dating back to 1995, is the "Modern English Grammar" by Daniel Kies, professor at the Department of English at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn (Chicago) Illinois/USA, 'the materials on this web site are written as supplemental reading for his Modern English grammar class and are freely available for everyone interested in English language studies, but teachers, publishers, schools, webmasters, and bloggers'. |
| Acronym- finder |
Acronym finder — used by our translators: frequently — If you are confronted with decisions regarding acronyms and abbreviations - as a translator most likely you are - there is Acronym Finder, a searchable database of more than over 750,000 human-edited definitions for acronyms and abbreviations. Acronym Finder is not a glossary of terms, web search engine, or dictionary or a thesaurus, it is only designed to search for and expand acronyms and abbreviations. Acronym Finder is a trusted ready reference resource at thousands of schools, libraries, and government websites. Yahoo reports over 1 million links to it, more than all other similar websites combined. By any measure, it is an authority website, trusted by schools, libraries, universities, governments, the defense industry, and translators and interpreters worldwide. The site adds more than 5,000 new acronym and abbreviation definitions to its database each month. Every term is reviewed for accuracy, verified from multiple sources, categorized, and edited by an experienced human editor. |
| Merriam- Webster |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Merriam-Webster as arguably the Internet´s most widely known online-dictionary has been America´s leading and most-trusted provider of language information for more than 150 years. Noah Webster published his first dictionary 'A Compendious Dictionary of the English Language' in 1806. In 1843, after Noah Webster´s death, George and Charles Merriam secured publishing and revision rights to the 1840 edition of the dictionary. In 1864, Merriam published a greatly expanded edition, which was the first version to change Webster´s text, largely overhauling his work yet retaining many of his definitions and the title 'An American Dictionary'. |
| American Heritage Dictionary |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — The online searchable American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language includes definitions, pronunciations, etymologies, and feature notes. The first hard copy edition appeared in 1969 and was highly praised for its Indo-European etymologies. The second edition, published in 1980, omitted the Indo-European etymologies, but they were reintroduced in the third edition, published in 1992. (Editor´s note: see also the sources for language history and etymology further below.) For expert consultation on words or constructions whose usage is controversial or problematic, the American Heritage Dictionary relies on the advice of a usage panel. In its current form, the panel consists of 200 prominent members of professions whose work demands sensitivity to language. |
| Oxford |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — In the tradition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), published by the Oxford University Press as a descriptive dictionary of the English language, at Oxford Dictionaries, they have just one thing in mind: improving communication through an understanding and passion for language. That explains why they've been making dictionaries for more than 150 years and why they continue to innovate and develop new tools and services to suit people's language needs as technology and the world around us change. For the makers of the OED it's not only about defining words or charting the history of English. From the beginning, they have immersed themselves in everything to do with language. As lexicographers and linguists, they collect, process, and analyse the living language and how it's changing, its history, its usage, its relations with other languages, and who's using it, from highbrow to slang. |
| Collins |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Another pioneer in dictionary publishing, founded by the Scottish millworker William Collins from Glasgow in 1819 who set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books and prayer books. The first book published by Harper is 'The Christian and Civic Economy of Large Towns'. Now, if you want to discover more about contemporary British and American English, the history of English words, are looking for word game tips, or want to check key phrases, then you´ve come to the right place. |
| Cam- bridge |
Multilingual learner's dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — 'Cambridge' published its first book in 1584 and is the oldest publishing house in the world. The Cambridge dictionaries online by Cambridge University Press is a series of popular online dictionaries and thesauri for learners of English, offering a variety of options: British English, American English, Business English and a functionality to find idioms and phrasal verbs. If you´re looking for a specific idiom, such as 'sell like hot cakes' you can find it by typing one of the main words of the idiom into the search box. |
| Chambers |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Immerse yourself in one of the most interesting, authoritative and helpful English dictionary available - the unrivalled guide for word lovers. Whether you're an avid wordgamer or just enjoy revelling in the quirks and curiosities of the English language, The Chambers Dictionary is your ultimate companion. First published in 1872, by William Chambers, a Scottish publisher and politician, along with his brother Robert Chambers, publisher, geologist, evolutionary thinker, author and journal editor, the contemporary Chambers dictionary contains more words, phrases and meanings than any other single-volume English dictionary - over 620,000 in all. |
| Macmillan |
Dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — The award-winning Macmillan English Dictionary was first published in 2002. Crafted by teams of lexicographers in Britain and the United States, it has as its source a corpus, a database containing millions of examples of English as used around the world. Extensive analysis of this corpus of real spoken and written text, using state-of-the-art software, has allowed the dictionary writers to reveal fresh information about how and when words are used. The dictionary has been regularly updated, and the latest edition, presented free online for the first time, includes a thesaurus, fully integrated into the entries. |
| Longman |
Monolingual learner's dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — The Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English Online is an advanced learner´s dictionary, providing definitions by using a restricted vocabulary, helping non-native English speakers to get meanings easily. It has been updated in its layout and released in the year 2008. The website offers search with spelling feature, definition, collocations, many examples and pictures. |
| Heinle's Newbury House |
Monolingual learner's dictionary of American English — used by our translators: rarely — The All-In-One Essential Tool for English Language Learning Heinle's Newbury House Dictionary of American English contains over 40,000 entries. With simple, clear definitions, this online tool provides a wealth of sample sentences and idioms. |
| Wordsmyth |
Educational dictionary thesaurus — used by our translators: actually never — Among a learners's and a children's dictionary (editor's note: less interesting for the visitors of this link page), the project WordsMyth is offering a comprehensive dictionary-thesaurus suite at three reading levels: Beginner's, Intermediate, and Advanced with clear, easy-to-read entries and definitions, synonyms, similar words, and antonyms displayed under each definition, audio pronunciations and thousands of images. |
| Macquarie |
Australian dictionary — used by our translators: actually never — 'The Macquarie Dictionary Online is updated annually, making it is the most up-to-date Australian dictionary and thesaurus available. Its comprehensive coverage means you'll find the right word every time' So far, so good. This the description of the publisher/editor of 'the standard reference on Australian English' which is is generally held by universities and the legal profession to be the authoritative source on Australian English that also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. The Macquarie Dictionary Online, which is available by subscription only while the charges are modest, is thus to be considered the most complete version of the dictionary with greatest coverage of Aussie-related encyclopedic and non-encyclopedic entries. It offers spoken pronunciations. |
| Fine Dictionary |
Meta dictionary — used by our translators: frequently — According to the description (hidden in the despription-tag) this is a 'dictionary with definitions from four dictionaries, that includes illustrations, example sentences, interesting facts, quotations, idioms and etymology as well as related words (synonyms, hypernyms, hyponyms)'. There are various meta dictionaries on the Internet, such as onelook.com (featuring the 'reverse dictionary', see further below), dictionary.com, yourdictionary.com and dictionary.reference.com. This one, however, is especially appealing due to its presentation, approach in shedding light on things from different angles, abundance of constructive, exuberant illustrations and clearly structured content. Entries are fetched from WordNet 3.6 (see the top of this page) Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (see section 'language history and etymology' below) and Chambers' Twentieth Century Dictionary (see further above in this section). |
| Wordnik |
Meta dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Accrding to the description Wordnik is the world's biggest online English dictionary, by number of words. As a nonprofit organization, it is the mission of Wordnik to find and share as many words of English as possible with as many people as possible.As a meta dictionary, Wordnik shows definitions from multiple sources, so you can see as many different takes on a word's meaning as possible. According to the Colophone page this sources are The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition (see above), The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia (see below), the GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English (see the next link), Roget's II: The New Thesaurus, Third Edition (see the Tools section at the top) and Wiktionary, the free dictionary (see below). |
| GCIDE |
Meta dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — The GNU Collaborative International Dictionary of English, or GCIDE for short, is a free dictionary derived from Webster's Revised Unabridged DictionaryVersion published 1913 (see section 'language history and etymology' below) under the direction of Noah Porter and supplemented with some new definitions, in particular from WordNet (see the Tools section at the top) As a part of the GNU project ("GNU", a recursive acronym meaning "GNU's not Unix", basing its design on that of Unix, is a proprietary operating system as part of a free/open software, mass collaboration project), the dictionary is created by Patrick J. Cassidy, and proof-read and supplemented by volunteers from around the world. |
| BNC |
Corpus-based dictionary — used by our translators: frequently — The British National Corpus (BNC), provided by the University of Oxford, is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English from the later part of the 20th century, both spoken and written. The latest edition is the BNC XML Edition, released in 2007. The written part of the BNC (90%) includes, for example, extracts from regional and national newspapers, specialist periodicals and journals for all ages and interests, academic books and popular fiction, published and unpublished letters and memoranda, school and university essays, among many other kinds of text. The spoken part (10%) consists of orthographic transcriptions of unscripted informal conversations (recorded by volunteers selected from different age, region and social classes in a demographically balanced way) and spoken language collected in different contexts, ranging from formal business or government meetings to radio shows and phone-ins. |
| COCA |
Corpus-based dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — The freely searchable Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) is the largest corpus of American English currently available, and the only publicly available corpus of American English to contain a wide array of texts from a number of genres, provided by the Brigham Young University, which is operated by the LDS Church, and is the largest religious university and third-largest private university in the U.S. The corpus is composed of more than 450 million words from more than 160,000 texts, including 20 million words each year from 1990 to 2011. The most recent update was made in Summer 2012. The source is used by approximately tens of thousands of users every month (linguists, teachers, translators, and other researchers), which may make it the most widely used "structured" corpus currently available. |
| OneLook |
Reverse dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — By now you may have used a standard search available from a home page, which shows you a list of definition links for any word you type in. Well, this is the reverse: Here you are provided with references for words that have definitions conceptually similar to the words you search for. This is been done by using a motley assortment of statistical language processing hacks. OneLook indexes hundreds of online dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference sites. OneLook´s reverse dictionary lets you describe a concept and get back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. Your description can be a few words, a sentence, a question, or even just a single word. Just type it into the search box and hit the "Find words" button. Keep it short to get the best results. In most cases you'll get back a list of related terms with the best matches shown first. |
| Wiktionary |
Collaborative dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — The aforementioned series of dictionary sources are all driven by commercial interests. To the contrary, Wiktionary (a blend of the words wiki and dictionary) is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of all words in all languages. It is available in 158 languages. Like its sister project Wikipedia, Wiktionary is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians". Wiktionary has grown beyond a standard dictionary and now includes a thesaurus, a rhyme guide, phrase books, language statistics and extensive appendices |
| CEiEU |
Guide to mixed-up, mangled expressions, foreign language faux pas, confusing terms, and commonly mispronounced words — used by our translators: occasionally — Written by Paul Brians, Emeritus Professor of English at Washington State University, "Common Errors in English Usage" is all about 'deviations from the standard use of English as judged by sophisticated users such as professional writers, editors, teachers, and literate executives and personnel officers. The aim of this site is to help to avoid low grades, lost employment opportunities, lost business, and titters of amusement at the way you write or speak.' (Editor´s comment: which, by the way, might reveal more about the titterer than the subject of amusement.) |
| Bridging the Un- bridgeable |
Online Usage guides collection — used by our translators: occasionally — Logically speaking, quite a remarkable kind of word-game (for a website theme): "seeing the unseeable" (or was it the "invisible"), "hearing the unhearable", "touching the untouchable", "bearing the unbearable" etc. Anyway, usage guides are a controversial topic among linguists because of their function to present a norm of correctness to whoever wishes to consult them. Linguistics as a discipline, however, is concerned with describing rather than prescribing usage (Editor's note: so if it as about prescribing usage [sic] of the English language, first and foremost, see the aforementioned link). Nevertheless, usage guides are extremely popular with the general public, and even increasingly so despite centuries of prescriptivism. Consequently, the site ("blog") deals with all sorts of usage questions. One of the sub-projects within Bridging the Unbridgeable is the creation of a database of English usage guides and usage problems: the 'Hyper Usage Guide of English', or HUGE-database. The HUGE-database contains usage guides from the entire history of the genre, starting in 1770 with the publication of the first ever usage guide, Robert Baker's 'Reflections on the English Language' in 1770, up to the present day with one of the most recently published usage guides, Simon Heffer's 'Strictly English'. The databse will also include such evergreens and best-sellers as Henry Fowler's 'Dictionary of Modern English Usage' (perhaps the most famous usage guide of them all) Bryan Garner's Modern American Usage, Strunk & White's 'Elements of Style' and 'Eats, Shoots and Leaves' by Lynne Truss. (Editor's note: see also our links at the bottom subsumed under the heading "Varia"). |
| The idiom dictionary |
Dictionary of idioms and phrases — used by our translators: occasionally — The idiom dictionary is compiled from the Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms and the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms (explaining over 7,000 idioms current in British, American and Australian English and the Cambridge Dictionary of American Idioms, based on the 200 million words of American English text in the Cambridge International Corpus, unlocks the meaning of more than 5,000 idiomatic phrases used in contemporary American English. As far as we can see, idioms are furthermore retrived from (outdated editions of) the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs and The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Amme. |
| Idiom- connection |
Collection of various idioms — used by our translators: rarely — 'An A-Z list of idioms, their meaning and use along with accompanying quizzes for the idioms in each alpha category' But what actually is an idiom? According to the operator of idiom connection: 'an idiom is a combination of words that has a meaning that is different from the meanings of the individual words themselves. It can have a literal meaning in one situation and a different idiomatic meaning in another situation. It is a phrase which does not always follow the normal rules of meaning and grammar.' hat make the ideom connection differen form the foregoing link to the idiom dictionary? Here you find ideoms by various themes in alphabetical order (at the right). |
| Pseudo- dictionary |
Collection of neolexia — used by our translators: actually never — Well, quite different from the previous source, here it is not about formal language at all, not even about informal language, it is about language that does not yet exist. Pseudodictionary is supposed to be an online dictionary for neologisms. But that's not quite true since neologisms are newly coined words. Here it is does not require the word already to have any current or common usage. A dictionary of words that 'wouldn't make it into dictionaries' - now over 11,000 neologisms strong. The site accepts words that have been made up on the spot, including words defined with a humorous intent. Pseudodictionary has some content guidelines: no profanity, no toilet humour, and no racist, sexist, or offensive language. |
| Urban Dictionary |
Slang collection — used by our translators: actually never — Unlike the aforementioned pseudodictionary which does not require the word already to have any current or common usage, the collaborative Urban Dictionary is an online dictionary of slang words and phrases. At the start of 2014, the dictionary featured over 7,000,000 definitions, while 2,000 new daily entries were being added. In November 2014, the advertise page of the website states that, on a monthly basis, Urban Dictionary averages 72,000,000 impressions and 18,000,000 unique readers. |
| Forvo |
Pronunciation guide — used by our translators: occasionally — With the latter sources we find ourself in an kind of twilight zone between the written and the spoken word. Now, here it is all about the spoken word. With Forvo, the pronunciation dictionary, you have the largest pronunciation guide in the world, "the place where you'll find millions of words pronounced in their original language". According to the Spanish operator, Forvo continues to work toward its mission as a go-to reference for authentic and veritable word pronunciations through over 116 million site visits annually and over 400,000 (registered) users. Seen from a linguistic point of view, the source is especially interesting, valuable and useful when it comes into the realm of sociolects, dialects and accents. (Editor's comment: imagine what it would like to be seeing William Shakespeare living right now, right here. Would you expect him to talk in this aloof posh accent? I hardly think so!). |
| Etym- online |
Etymology dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — In contrary to the above mentioned pseudo and urban dictionary sources which are collecting terms that do not yet exist at all - or at least do not officially exist, this is a map of the wheel-ruts of modern English. Etymologies are not definitions; they're explanations of what our words meant and how they sounded 600 or 2,000 years ago. The dates beside a word indicate the earliest year for which there is a surviving written record of that word (in English, unless otherwise indicated). This should be taken as approximate, especially before about 1700, since a word may have been used in conversation for hundreds of years before it turns up in a manuscript that has had the good fortune to survive the centuries. |
| HTE |
Historical thesaurus — used by our translators: occasionally — The Historical Thesaurus of English project was initiated in 1965 and completed in 2008. It contains almost 800,000 word meanings from Old English onwards, arranged in detailed hierarchies within broad conceptual categories. It is based on the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary and its Supplements, with additional materials from A Thesaurus of Old English, and was published in print as the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary by Oxford University Press in 2009. This electronic version enables users to pinpoint the range of meanings of a word throughout its history, their synonyms, and their relationship to words of more general or more specific meaning. In addition to providing hitherto unavailable information for linguistic and textual scholars, the Historical Thesaurus online is a rich resource for students of social and cultural history, showing how concepts developed through the words that refer to them. |
| The Century Dictionary |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia was one of the largest encyclopedic dictionaries of the English language. The first edition was published from 1889 to 1891 by The Century Company of New York, in six, eight, or ten volume versions (originally issued in 24 fascicles) in 7,046 pages with some 10,000 wood-engraved illustrations. It was edited by Sanskrit scholar and linguist William Dwight Whitney, with Benjamin Eli Smith´s assistance. It was a great expansion of the smaller Imperial Dictionary of the English Language, which in turn had been based on the 1841 edition of Noah Webster´s American Dictionary. (Editor´s note: for the latter, see also our "sources for translators" above, for the first, see the following). |
| The Imperial Dictionary |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: acutually never — As "Complete Encyclopedic Lexicon, Literary, Scientific, and Technological", the Imperial Dictionary of the English Language was edited - for empirical dictionary use purposes - by Reverend John Ogilvie. Despite, or perhaps, due to the somehow remarkable title for a dictionary source, at least seen from a contemporary point of view, the Imperial Dictionary was widely accepted as a standard lexicon of the English language before the public for more than a quarter of a century, and as one of the most useful for the purposes of general reference and everyday requirement. The initial publication of The Imperial Dictionary or the English Language, as edited by John Ogilvie, was commenced in January, 1847, and completed in the same month of tho year 1850. In 1854 the publication of the Supplement was begun, and it was finished the following year (1855). This work was based on the American dictionary' of Noah Webster, the last which received amendments from the hands of the author himself. The later editions had been (carefully) revised and (greatly) augmented by the editor Charles Annandale. |
| Johnson´s |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — Samuel Johnson´s dictionary, published on 15 April 1755 as "dictionary of the English Language", sometimes published as Johnson´s Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language. This website (project) will attempt to create a digital and easily searchable version of the first edition of Samuel Johnson´s Dictionary of the English Language. It will hopefully provide an interesting and useful resource to all those interested in 16th-18th century English literature (Spenser, Shakespeare, Locke, etc.), lexicographiles, lovers of quotations, visitors who land here by chance, etc. |
| Bailey´s |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — A dictionary compiled by Nathan Bailey (or Nathaniel Bailey) and first published in London in 1721. It was the most popular English dictionary of the eighteenth century. As an indicator of its popularity it reached its 20th edition in 1763 and its 27th edition in 1794. Its last edition (30th) was in 1802. See the Internet Archive version (second volume, as of 1742), made available via the University of Toronto - Robarts Library. |
| Skeat´s |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — A dictionary compiled by Reverend Walter William Skeat - klerington and professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge - and first published in Oxford in 1888. According to the author it "was not intended to be always authoritative, nor are the conclusions arrived at to be accepted as final. It was rather intended as a guide to future writers, showing them in some cases what ought certainly to be accepted, and in other cases, it may be, what to avoid." |
| Bouvier's |
Historical law dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — Bouvier's Law Dictionary is a set consisting of 2 or 3 books with a long tradition in the United States legal community. The first edition was written by the French native John Bouvier who came to the United States at an early age. As a lawyer, one of his main goals was to distinguish American law from its English antecedent. Like many of his generation, Bouvier used his preface to justify his work, stating the irrelevance of English legal dictionaries to the American legal system of the United States. He wanted to create a totally new law dictionary that would address the American legal system, so he derived his definitions almost wholly from customs, court decisions, and statutes of the United States. |
| Brewer´s |
Reference work — used by our translators: rarely — Brewer´s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, sometimes referred to simply as Brewer´s, is a reference work - a book or serial publication to which one can refer for confirmed facts - containing definitions and explanations of many famous phrases, allusions and figures, whether historical or mythical. Originally published in 1870 by the Reverend Cobham Brewer, it was aimed at the growing number of people who did not have a university education, but wanted to understand the origins of phrases and historical or literary allusions. The 'phrase' part of the title refers mainly to the explanation of various idioms and proverbs, while the 'fable' part might more accurately be labelled 'folklore' and ranges from classical mythology to relatively recent literature. The 'Revised and Updated Edition' from the 1890s is now in the public domain, and web-based versions are available online as part of the Public Library via the Internet Archive. |
| An Unknown Author´s |
Reference work — used by our translators: rarely — Modern Dictionary of the English Language. As a "forgotten book", originally published in 1911 (London/Macmillan) and according to it´s unknown author: "as desideratum ([sic] something that is wanted or needed) it should be specially suitable for the use of pupils in Secondary Schools and the upper classes of Elementary Schools. Such a book should be (I) helpful in the reading of ordinary current literature;(II) a guide to the peculiarities of spelling and pronunciation;(III) free from all objectionable words and meanings; and (IV) printed in very bold, clear type." |
| The Devil´s |
Satirical dictionary — used by our translators: actually never — The aforementioned dictionary sources are quite often written by clerics (editor's comment: that also goes true for German and Dutch historical dictionaries, see our parallel pages); which is obviously not the case here. Written by the American journalist and author Ambrose Bierce and originally published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book, the devil's dictionary features Bierce's witty and often ironic spin on many common English words. Really worth to browse through! |
| MED |
Dictionary of Middle English — used by our translators: rarely — Welcome to the electronic Middle English Dictionary. The print MED, completed in 2001, has been described as 'the greatest achievement in medieval scholarship in America.' Its 15,000 pages offer a comprehensive analysis of lexicon and usage for the period 1100-1500, based on the analysis of a collection of over three million citation slips, the largest collection of this kind available. This electronic version of the MED preserves all the details of the print Middle English Dictionary, but goes far beyond this, by converting its contents into an enormous database, searchable in ways impossible within any print dictionary. |
| DOE |
Dictionary of Old English — used by our translators: acutually never — Now here is the Dictionary of Old English (DOE) that defines the vocabulary of the first six centuries (C.E. 600-1150) of the English language, using twenty-first century technology. Old English, by the way, should not be confused with Middle English - see the aforementioned link - also known as Early Modern English. Old English is the language of Beowulf. Early Modern English is the language of Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible. The DOE complements the Middle English Dictionary (which covers the period C.E. 1100-1500) and the Oxford English Dictionary, the three together providing a full description of the vocabulary of English. For access see 'Research Tools' in the menu. For For certain categories a registration is required, Creating an account is free of charge. |
| OE Aerobics |
Glossary of Old English — used by our translators: rarely — Operated by the University of Verginia, there is the Old English Aerobics Glossary as part of Old English Aerobics, containing an anthology, glossary, workbook, miscellaneous resources and workout Room (obsolete but still operational), based on Peter S. Baker's Introduction to Old English, published by Wiley-Blackwell. Access tie glossary is free, you must, however, log in to access most of the texts and exercises on this site. You can get a free account. |
| Bosworth- Toller |
Dictionary of Old English — used by our translators: acutually never — An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, hence a dictionary of Old English, a language that was previously known as Anglo-Saxon. Four editions of the dictionary were published. It has often (especially in earlier times) been considered the 'definitive' lexicon for Old English. It is often referred to by the names of its creators Joseph Bosworth and Thomas Northcote Toller. |
| Jamieson´s |
Historical dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — Reverend Dr John Jamieson was a Scottish minister of religion, lexicographer, philologist and antiquary. Jamieson's major work, the Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language appeared in 2 volumes in 1808 and was completed by the author almost alone. A revised edition by John Longmuir and David Donaldson was issued in 1879-1887. These volumes remained the standard reference work for the Scots language until the publication of the Scottish National Dictionary in 1931. (Editor´s note: (As of June 2015) this is a working prototype of Jamieson's Dictionary Online. According to the publisher, there will soon be a real description of the dictionary on this page. For the time being users are able to view the dictionary by selecting a volume or using one of the full text search forms). |
| DSL |
Dictionary of (Old) Scots — used by our translators: acutually never — The Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL, Scots: Dictionar o the Scots Leid) is an online Scottish-English dictionary, freely available via the Internet, comprising the two major dictionaries of the Scots language:, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST), 12 volumes and the Scottish National Dictionary (SND), 10 volumes. While the DOST contains information about Older Scots words in use from the 12th to the end of the 17th centuries (Early and Middle Scots), the SND contains information about Scots words in use from 1700 to the 1970s (Modern Scots). Together these 22 volumes provide a comprehensive history of Scots. |
| Turner´s |
Comparative dictionary of the Indo-Aryan languages — used by our translators: acutually never — This comparative dictionary of Indo-Aryan languages represents a lifetime's development of materials collected by Ralph Lilley Turner (1888 - 1983). The presentation (on-line) allows readers to search for all of the information in the indexes to the ink-print edition and is funded in part by the U. S. Department of Education. There are 14,189 numbered entries in the main sequence, arranged in alphabetical order under Sanskrit, or reconstructed proto-Indo-Aryan forms. Entries (unnumbered) are also provided under the 'roots' familiar in Sanskrit and Indo-Aryan philology, with cross-references to the words that belong to them. |
| US Supreme Court Opinions |
Legal corpus search — used by our translators: frequently — This corpus contains approximately 130 million words in 32,000 Supreme Court decisions from the 1790s to the current time. Some of the more useful features of the corpus might be the following.
Word and phrase frequency: See the frequency in each decade from the 1790s to the current time.
Comparison between decades: See what words, phrases, or collocates (nearby words) are more frequent in one historical period than another.
Collocates: Collocates (nearby words) are often a good indication of the meaning or use of a word -- the idea being that (as with people) "you can tell a lot about a word by the company it keeps".
Comparing collocates: Tease apart the difference between near-synonyms (such as illegal and unlawful) or compare what is being said about two contrasting words or concepts (e.g. plaintiffs and defendants).
KWIC / concordance lines: Similar to collocates (above), you can see the phrases and patterns in which a word occurs (and compare them in different periods). |
| Lawinsider |
Legal definitions dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Comprehensive resource online for a wide variety of legal definitions. |
| Legal Definitions |
Legal definitions dictionary — used by our translators: frequently — Yet another comprehensive online resource: 'Legal Definitions & Legal Terms Defined' features a wide variety of legal definitions. The provider US Legal, Inc. updates the database of terms weekly. According to the provider it boasts the most up-to-date legal term dictionary on the Internet |
| Black´s |
Law dictionary — used by our translators: frequently — Black´s Law Dictionary, founded by Henry Campbell Black, has been a trusted source of legal definitions and terms for over 100 years and is the most widely used law dictionary in the United States. The first edition was published in 1891, and the second edition in 1910. Black´s second Edition is is now in the public domain and provided free of charge for your research and business needs. |
| MW Law |
Law dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Merriam-Webster´s dictionary of law is a convenient, comprehensive guide to the language of law for everyone from the homeowner to the legal professional. Via findlaw´s surface you have it on your hands. |
| Du- haime´s |
Law dictionary — used by our translators: rarley — Hereafter see the description by the faculty of law, Cornell University: "Duhaime´s Law Dictionary is researched and written by Canadian barrister and solicitor Lloyd Duhaime. A hyperlinked alphabetical index leads the user to a list of legal terms and their definitions that begin with the letter the user has selected. Legal terms used within a definition are defined through hyperlinks. Multiple definitions of a single term are provided when appropriate. Many definitions are coupled with examples further clarifying the meaning of the term. The alphabetical links are on every page searched, so that other terms may be searched without returning to the homepage. The dictionary includes common Latin legal words and phrases as well as English terms. Duhaime has created a site which both layman and attorney will find easy to search and understand." |
| Free Legal Dictionary |
Law dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — The main source of The FreeDictionary's legal dictionary is West's Encyclopedia of American Law, Edition 2, which contains more than 4,000 entries detailing terms, concepts, events, movements, cases, and individuals significant to United States law. The legal dictionary also incorporates The People's Law Dictionary, by renowned authorities Gerald and Kathleen Hill, which includes definitions, context, and usage for more than 3,000 terms. Regarded by scholars, jurists, leading attorneys and reviewers as one of the most practical works of its kind, The People's Law Dictionary is a comprehensive source of meanings and use for thousands of today's most common legal terms. The legal dictionary incorporates furthermore Burton's Legal Thesaurus, Edition 4 by William C. Burton, and last but not least, the (historic) Law Dictionary, Adapted to the Constitution and Laws of the United States by John Bouvier, published in the year 1856. (Editor's note: see section "langue history and etymologie" above.) |
| World Law Dictionary |
Law dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — Translations of key legal terms: Starting in 2020, the World Law Dictionary will provide accurate and reliable translations into English of the essential legal terms in ten languages and more languages will be added every year, with: extensive comparative law notes, e.g. unique and valuable notes produced by university scholars and experienced lawyers to help you understand and explain subtle differences between your legal concepts and their English equivalents, and: Straightforward definitions,e.g. definitions of English legal concepts that are clear and easy to understand, written at an intermediate level and designed especially for non-native speakers of English. |
| Free Financial Dictionary |
Financial dictionary — used by our translators: occasionally — One of the main sources of financial dictionary is the financial glossary by Campbell R. Harvey, renowned finance expert and J. Paul Sticht, professor of International Business at Duke University. It provides concise definitions of 8,000 terms with 18,000 useful links. This information comes from the world of banking and investing, providing users with thorough and reliable meanings to all the most common, and even uncommon, financial terms. Among a variety of other financial glossaries the financial dictionary also includes the Investopedia.com dictionary, featuring definitions of more than 5,000 terms, 1000 plus articles, and 500 pages of in-depth tutorials relating to investing. |
| Unterm |
Multilingual terminology database — used by our translators: occasionally — UNterm provides United Nations nomenclature, technical or specialized terms and common phrases in all six official UN languages - English, French, Spanish, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. The database is mainly intended for use by the language staff of the United Nations to ensure accurate and consistent usage in documents published by the Organization.
UNterm content is generated by the terminology team of the Terminology and Reference Section, Documentation Division and the Department for General Assembly and Conference Management. |
| Iate |
Multilingual terminology database — used by our translators: frequently — Inter active terminology for Europe is the EU inter-institutional terminology database. IatE has been used in the EU institutions and agencies since summer 2004 for the collection, dissemination and shared management of EU-specific terminology. The project was launched in 1999 with the objective of providing a web-based infrastructure for all EU terminology resources, enhancing the availability and standardisation of the information.
IatE incorporates all of the existing terminology databases of the EU´s translation services into a single new, highly interactive and accessible interinstitutional database. |
| Euroterm- bank |
Multilingual terminology database — used by our translators: rarely — Largely developed under the auspices of the Latvian Tilde and the Hungarian Kilgray, the EuroTermBank project results in a centralized online terminology bank for languages of new EU member countries interlinked to other terminology banks and resources. Although EuroTermBank is addressed directly towards Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland, the project is open to other new EU member states and interested countries and organizations outside EU. It also enables exchange of terminology data with existing national and EU terminology databases by establishing cooperative relationships, aligning methodologies and standards, designing and implementing data exchange mechanisms and procedures. |
| Terminum |
Multilingual terminology database — used by our translators: frequently — Provided by the Canadian government this quadrilingual database gives the precise English, French or Spanish or Portuguese equivalent to designate anything from a simple tool or a complex machine, to a disease or plant, association or committee. Almost every field of human endeavour is covered. The database provide for 3,900,000 terms and names, with definitions, contexts, examples of usage, observations and phraseological units, specialized and highly specialized terms. |
| Glosbe |
Parallel corpora and translation memory — used by our translators: frequently — Translation memories for a wide range of contemporary languages with more than 1,000,000,000 sentences included. glosbe.com might be described as low profile in appearance, yet enormously appealing i.e. beneficial as a source for translating any conceivable subject matter! |
| Taus |
Industry-shared translation memories platform — used by our translators: rarely — Platform for sharing language data (translation memories). Brimming with self-confidence the platform defines itself as super cloud for the global translation industry, helping to improve translation quality and automation. The obvious advantage of a membership - most members are multinational companies - is that you have data upload and translation matching opportunities at your hand. The obvious disadvantage of a membership is that you will have to 'license' your intellectual property rights to the provider of the platform - according to terms of use. However, you can make use of the database without being a member, requests are handled yawningly slowly, though. |
| My Memory |
Virtual translation memory provider — used by our translators: occasionally — The tool has been created as a kind of meta translation memory collecting parallel corpora from the European Union, United Nations and others and works like a linguistic search engine which you can use to look up translated segments and terminology in any language pair and subject domain. One thing, however, that strikes us - and most likely, it strikes a lot of users - is that the tool fetches entries from the Google Translate database, regardless whether there is a clear match (that might be utilized). |
| Grand Dictionnaire |
French - English dictionary source — used by our translators: occasionally — The Grand dictionnaire terminologique (GDT) is an online terminological database containing nearly 3 million French, English and Latin technical terms in 200 industrial, scientific and commercial fields. Produced by the Office québécois de la langue française, the GDT is the result of thirty years of work by Quebec-based terminologists. It is the most complete translation resource for Canadian English-language technical terms. When translations differ between Quebec French and "Standard French", — for example in the expression "cerebrovascular accident" (CVA),[1] translated as accident cérébrovasculaire (ACV) in Quebec French and accident vasculaire cérébral in France — the two forms are both given with a paragraph describing their origins, usage and conformity. The GDT thus allows writers to adapt their writing to suit their audience, be it North American, European or African. |
| Dict. Leo |
Multilingual dictionary source — used by our translators: frequently — LEO, meaning Link Everything Online, is an Internet-based electronic dictionary and translation dictionary initiated by the computer science department of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. Its dictionaries can be consulted free online from any web browser or from LEO´s Lion downloadable user interface (GUI) which is free to private users only. The original aim was to create a single, huge archive by linking up archives run by the different research groups (hence its name LEO - Link Everything Online. Dictionaries are partly added by large vocabulary donations of individuals or companies, partly through suggestions and discussions on the LEO language forums. The English-German dictionary run by Leo since 1995 contains about 660,000 entries and receives an average of 11 million queries per weekday. |
| Dict.cc |
Interactive multilingual dictionary source — used by our translators: frequently — It´s been 11 years that the first version of dict.cc went online as just a search feature powered by a database of around 120,000 German-English entries. Over the years this vocabulary grew to an amazing 945,000 entries and will inevitably exceed the million mark in the foreseeable future. This was only made possible by 21,330 registered (and many more unregistered) contributors. Especially useful is the computer-generated voice output (access a library of almost 650,000 audio samples from native speakers in various languages). There is also the Dict.cc add-on for Firefox, supporting multiple languages, which can be downloaded to use the context menu to translate selected text into multiple languages. It is also possible to do a quick search on a word. Results can be shown as a pop-up or in a new tab or as an in-page translation layer. |
| Spanish Dict |
Interactive Spanish - English dictionary source, learner's dictionary — used by our translators: rarely — SpanishDict is the world's largest Spanish-English dictionary (featuring more than 1,000.000 translations), translation, and language learning website. We develop and provide reliable, accurate, easy-to-use resources for learning Spanish. It is also aimed to cultivate a fun and active community where members can ask and answer questions. |
| Ngram Viewer |
Phrase-usage graphing tool — used by our translators: occasionally — In close relation to the language history sources mentioned further above there´s the Google Ngram Viewer that lets you explore how phrases have been used in books spanning the centuries. This phrase-usage graphing tool charts the yearly count of selected n-grams (letter combinations) or words and phrases, as found in over 5.2 million digitized books. The word-search database was created by Google Labs, based originally on 5.2 million books, published between 1500 and 2008, containing 500 billion words in American English, British English, French, German, Spanish, Russian, or Chinese. As of 2012 the Ngram Viewer got a few updates: more books in its data set; a way to identify parts of speech, so you can compare the use of verb and nouns form of words; and the ability to create "Ngram compositions" by adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing Ngram counts from one another. |
| Anagram Generator |
Anagram generator — used by our translators: scarcely — Did you know that rearranging the letters of "George Bush" gives "He bugs Gore", "Madonna Louise Ciccone" gives "Occasional nude income". More interesting, however, "Jim Morrison" gives "Mr. Mojo Risin" (... got to keep on risin, risin risin ... you remember that, don't you) and - surprising in its oddity - "William Shakespeare" gives "I am a weakish speller". An anagram is a type of word play, the result of rearranging the letters of a word or phrase to produce a new word or phrase, using all the original letters exactly once. Now, this tool takes your name or any other text and uses Artificial Intelligence techniques to instantly find relevant, amusing anagrams. Can't believe it? Try it out yourself! |
| English Stack- exchange |
Interactive portal for the English language — used by our translators: scarcely — English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It's built and run by participants as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With the help of its visitors they're working together to build a library of detailed answers to every question about English language and usage. It's free, no registration required, anybody can ask a question, anybody can answer, the best answers are voted up and rise to the top. |
| Vocabulary |
"Learn English" Community and Q&A Site — used by our translators: scarcely — Similar in concept to the foregoing: If you're not positive what 'amelioration' and 'vernacular' mean, vocabulary.com is here to help. The site beefs up your word power with more than 40,000 multiple-choice questions, while the dictionary zeroes in on the word you're looking for and its meaning faster than any other online dictionary. Just start typing a word and the dictionary will display the most likely results (autocomplete scheme). |
| English Forums |
Edutainment tool — used by our translators: rearly — EnglishForums.com operates as online community of teachers and ESL (English as a second language) students. The company is based in Malta. They pretend to be 'the world's largest English language related social network'. The site features home, ask a question, teachers, students, forums and a live chat. The site features tags, active topics and unanswered with categories like articles, friendships, grammar, languages, quotes, universities and more. |
| At The National Archives |
National archive online — used by our translators: occasionally — As guardians of some of most iconic national documents, dating back over 1,000 years the National Archives, physically located in Kew Richmond Surrey, is the official archive and publisher for the UK government, and for England and Wales. The National Archives' collection of over 11 million historical government and public records is one of the largest in the world and includes paper and parchment, electronic records and websites, photographs, posters, maps, drawings and paintings. |
| NARA |
National archive online — used by our translators: occasionally — The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the United States Of America nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the US Federal government, only a fraction are so important for legal or historical reasons that they are kept by NARA forever. Bearing in mind that in a democracy records belong to the people, NARA had have been established in 1934 by President Franklin Roosevelt and has preserved and provided access to the records of the United States of America. Its major holdings date back to 1775 and 'they capture the sweep of the past: slave ship manifests and the Emancipation Proclamation; captured German records and the Japanese surrender documents from World War II; journals of polar expeditions and photographs of Dust Bowl farmers; Indian treaties making transitory promises; and a richly bound document bearing the bold signature "Bonaparte", the Louisiana Purchase Treaty that doubled the territory of the young republic'. |
| Eric |
Online digital library — used by our translators: occasionally — Sponsored by the Institute of Education Sciences of the United States Department of Education, ERIC (Education Resources Information Center) provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use, searchable, Internet-based bibliographic and full-text database of education research and information for educators, researchers, and the general public, offering access to more than 1.3 million bibliographic records (citations, abstracts, and other pertinent data) of journal articles and other education-related materials, with hundreds of new records added every week. The database contains records for a variety of publication types, including: journal articles, books, research syntheses, conference papers, technical reports, dissertations, policy papers, an other education-related materials. To help users find the information they are seeking, ERIC produces a controlled vocabulary, the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors. This is a carefully selected list of education-related words and phrases used to tag materials by subject and make them easier to retrieve through a search. |
| Hathitrust |
Online digital library — used by our translators: occasionally — Hathi, pronounced "hah-tee", is the Hindi and Urdu word for elephant, an animal famed for its long-term memory. As partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future, HathiTrust is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via the Google Books project and Internet Archive digitization initiatives (see below). There are more than 100 partners in HathiTrust - the partnership includes research libraries across the United States, Canada, and Europe, and is based on a shared governance structure - while membership is open to institutions worldwide. HathiTrust was founded in October 2008 by the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California. |
| Wayback Machine |
Digital archive of the World Wide Web — used by our translators: occasionally — Likewise to our (self) consciousness as an individual human, our history as mankind and the macrocosm around us, the early beginnings of the World Wide Web are beyond an insuperable barrier in time as the Web Archive's Wayback Machine 'Take Me Back' brings you back only to the year 1996, while the history of the Web dates back to the early 1990's. Anyway, the Wayback Machine is a digital archive of the World Wide Web and other information on the Internet created by the Internet Archive, a non-profit organization, based in San Francisco, California. The service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the Archive calls a "three dimensional index." As of December 2014 the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. |
| Geonames |
Geographical database — used by our translators: occasionally — GeoNames geographical database contains over 10 million geographical names and consists of over 9 million unique features whereof 2.8 million populated places and 5.5 million alternate names. All features are categorized into one out of nine feature classes and further subcategorized into one out of 645 feature codes. The data is accessible free of charge through a number of webservices and a daily database export. GeoNames is already serving up to over 150 million web service requests per day. |
