Thread: What Dictionary Software do you use?

I've been looking for some good dictionary software... and I wanted to hear what other people use..

The ones I found were BABYLON and ABBYY Lingvo x3.
(Abbyy also has a "v.12" and I can't work out if that's the same as "x3" – does anybody know?)

The downside of Babylon, as far as I can tell, is that it does not put accents on the Russian words. Any Ru dictionary for learners is almost useless without that, IMHO.
Babylon has a little audio icon next to all words, but nothing happens when I click on it. Does anytbody know anything about the audio functionality in Babylon?

ABBYY, on the other hand, has word stress on the Russian words, but unlike Babylon it does not have a GOOD Swedish dictionary, at least as far as I've been able to find out. (It is a bit hard for me to search due to my limited Russian..) The English dictionaries in ABBYY are VERY good though.

Do you use either of these programs? Or something else, what? Have you been able to find a dictionary with audio? That would be awesome!

I like the dictionaries at mail.ru. There are various English ones I sometimes refer to to disambiguate when I look up something in German which isn't quite clear. But most of the time I use pons.eu these days - but I suppose that's not very useful for you.

Robin

Lingvo x3 is 13th version. 13 is unlucky number, therefore developers gave x3 as a name. By the way, ABBYY is Russian company, therefore Russian dictionaries are also good.

are you talking about software to put on your computer i.e. not websites?

Originally Posted by delog

Lingvo x3 is 13th version. 13 is unlucky number, therefore developers gave x3 as a name. By the way, ABBYY is Russian company, therefore Russian dictionaries are also good.

Thanks for explaining! I am having some trouble installing Lingvo x3 (but installed 12 fine). Now that I know it's the latest version I'll make an effort to find out what the problem is.

@Sperk; yes I'm talking about software, not about websites. Basically a real dictionary (plus some extras) in electronic format. In my opinion all of the translation sites have some limitations. This is more the real thing. The best websites I think are Wiktionary and Gramota.ru. Which one do you use?

@Bitpicker - thanks for the tips about Mail.ru – I'll be sure to check it out. There is one good online Russian - Swedish dictionary, but it's aimed at engineering students so all the examples are based on engineering scenarios which I don't like.

Originally Posted by Johanna

@Sperk; yes I'm talking about software, not about websites. Basically a real dictionary (plus some extras) in electronic format. In my opinion all of the translation sites have some limitations. This is more the real thing. The best websites I think are Wiktionary and Gramota.ru. Which one do you use?

for translating: http://lingvo.yandex.ru/en
http://multitran.ru is a little more hip, slangy.

I consider http://starling.rinet.ru/morph.htm invaluable as it gives complete declensions of verbs and nouns (limited translation info though.)

I use multitran.ru. It's great for translating, albeit sometimes incorrect due to a policy of free article addition. I wouldn't recommed it for beginners.

it does not put accents on the Russian words. Any Ru dictionary for learners is almost useless without that, IMHO

Originally Posted by Johanna

Originally Posted by delog

Lingvo x3 is 13th version. 13 is unlucky number, therefore developers gave x3 as a name. By the way, ABBYY is Russian company, therefore Russian dictionaries are also good.

Thanks for explaining! I am having some trouble installing Lingvo x3 (but installed 12 fine). Now that I know it's the latest version I'll make an effort to find out what the problem is.

I use the 12th version and it seems that x3 is not very different from the previous one. You can download Quick User Guide (English) for x3 here and see that almost all the features are available in the 12th version. А здесь лежит это же руководство на русском (3,86 МБ). In the new version, they added Wiki search and Yandex search, added some dictionaries (I don't remember which, those languages are not important for me) and I've heard that they removed one of the English dictionaries, that seems to be all.

but unlike Babylon it does not have a GOOD Swedish dictionary

Johanna, have you thought about using both?
I have several dictionaries on my computer - Lingvo, Longman, and LingoPad, and I used to have some others.


In case you didn't see some of these links (of course, I don't know if they are good, I can't speak Swedish):

http://www.lingvoda.ru/dictionaries/...asp?dictId=117
Есть также версия с ударениями в русских словах. - There is also the version with accents in Russian words.

http://www.lingvoda.ru/dictionaries/...asp?dictId=118
Из-за ударений полнотекстовый поиск в этом словаре не работает. - The full-text search in this dictionary doesn't work because of accents.

http://sveru.narod.ru/

http://lingvodics.com/dics/view/Swedish
The list of Swedish dictionaries for Lingvo that are made to date. It's just a list, there are no dictionaries on this site, most of them can be found on Ru.Board Forum (but I'd say it's not easy to orientate oneself there, so it's better to ask someone who is already registered on that forum, to get the dictionary you want).

http://www.lingvoda.ru/dictionaries/index.asp
Many dictionaries for Lingvo (you might find there something useful for you).

What is good about programmes like Lingvo (they are called словарные оболочки) is that you can open just one programme and search in many dictionaries at once, you don't have to go to different sites.

What I didn't like.
When you make a big dictionary for Lingvo Tutor (more than 100 cards), it works slowly. So I'd recommend not to make big user dictionaries.
There is no "Translate using ABBYY Lingvo" in the Firefox contextual menu, it's available only in IE (alexB mentioned it in this topic).

I'm trying ABBYY Lingvo x3. It's lightening fast, beats waiting for lingvo.yandex.ru.
$80 seems a bit steep though.

Originally Posted by sperk"
[quote]
I consider [url="http://starling.rinet.ru/morph.htm

http://starling.rinet.ru/morph.htm[/url] invaluable as it gives complete declensions of verbs and nouns (limited translation info though.)

Yes it is quite good and not afraid to translate even the F word. invaluable!

Present participle
Masculine Feminine Neutral Plural
Nominative совокупля'ющийся совокупля'ющаяся совокупля'ющееся совокупля'ющиеся
Genitive совокупля'ющегося совокупля'ющейся совокупля'ющегося совокупля'ющихся
Dative совокупля'ющемуся совокупля'ющейся совокупля'ющемуся совокупля'ющимся
Accusative inanimate совокупля'ющийся совокупля'ющуюся совокупля'ющееся совокупля'ющиеся
Accusative animate совокупля'ющегося совокупля'ющуюся совокупля'ющееся совокупля'ющихся
Instrumental совокупля'ющимся совокупля'ющейся, совокупля'ющеюся совокупля'ющимся совокупля'ющимися
Locative совокупля'ющемся совокупля'ющейся совокупля'ющемся совокупля'ющихся
Past participle

[/quote]

Zaya - Thank you SO much for helping me find the dictionary site. For some reason I did not see your comment until now. Thanks a lot! I could never have found that on my own.

Originally Posted by Zaya

What I didn't like. When you make a big dictionary for Lingvo Tutor (more than 100 cards), it works slowly. So I'd recommend not to make big user dictionaries.

Have you tried "Anki" http://ichi2.net/anki/ ?
This is a great piece of high-quality open source software. It's not a dictionary it's a learning tool - a flashcard set -- very nice.

You can use it to learn new words or sentences and add sound and pictures
Highly recommended.
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I finally got Lingvo x3 running - VERY nice.
I'm going to go through the dictionaries that Zaya linked to.
There IS a Swedish dictionary in the pack that I downloaded, but it just seems a bit basic compared with the English one. Hopefully I'll find something on the sites that Zaya discovered.

Ideally I'd also like to get a "talking" dictionary up and running. Supposedly some of the Lingvo dictionaries have that functionality but I haven't seen it working yet.

Screenshot from Anki: