*this blog post is the result of requests from the audience of my presentation at the LICTRA 2010 conference asking for tips and tricks on how professional translators can make the most of Web 2.0 as as resource for information and knowledge management. I started with a compilation of the most ‘famous’ online tools and dictionaries as well as discussion forums. It will be updated and extended constantly. Your comments and suggestions are very welcome.*
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get info
- Google Hit List: be careful and critical, don’t only type the term you are looking for in the entry field, hit “Enter” and then simply base your decision on the number of hits you are getting! Learn how Google Search works instead: Read the Google Search Basics (Basic Search Help and More Search Help) This also works for other search engines you might be using. First know how they work, then make best use of their functionalities. By the way, it is always worth a shot using various search engines for a query and comparing the hits returned with each other.
- There are numerous terminology bases, online dictionaries, language forums, etc available on the internet. As it held true for the good old paper dictionaries, the ones online should also be used with a critical mindset. Particularly the ones that are compiled based on user discussions in associated discussion forums or pull data from parallel online texts such as multi-lingual websites can be powerful resources but must be considered carefully. Some famous online dictionaries are:
* http://www.leo.org/, the constantly evolving online dictionary from the TU München (DE – EN, ES, FR, IT, CH, RU)
* www.merriam-webster.com/ – a classic (EN, monolingual)
* myjmk.com (DE-ES, ES-DE)
* http://www.diclib.com/, which links to numerous dictionaries (e.g. an online version of the spanish dictionary María Moliner) and glossaries (e.g. English-Arabic Automotive Glossary)
* Wortschatz Uni Leipzig (DE, monolingual, providing further linguistic information such as the term’s frequency of appearance.)
* Wortschatz dictionary EN – DE
- Glossaries:
* Glossary Of Green Terms & Definitions
* Glossary Of Organic & Natural Food Terms
* more Food Glossaries
- One example of a search engine pulling terms and their various translations from multilingual websites (such as the European Parliament’s -> http://www.europarl.europa.eu/) is linguee.com (See my blog post about linguee to get some background information about the start-up. Now, that I’ve been using linguee.com for more than a year I would only recommend it as a source of “inspiration”, because of the text snippets (i.e. the co-text) displayed. However, this tool is still not mature enough to be recommended as a trustworthy tool to use. Please consider the sources the hits are pulled from. The terms from the European Parliament’s texts are – of course – very good quality.)
- I find the Visual Thesaurus/ particularly helpful. The free online version is a trial version that you can start over and over again. This tool is extremely powerful when it comes to calling up associations and “creatively” finding the words you are looking for. It’s also nice looking and fun to use. Don’t miss their articles and blog posts on linguistics, writing, etc. – they are real inspiration!
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get knowledge
Online discussion forums adressing language and translation topics are a great resource when facing a translation problem. In the leo.org discussion forums, most of the time it only takes a couple of minutes until you will get an answer to your question. In the meantime, you can also browse the posts of other users and contribute yourself: “You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
The advantage of such forums is the possibility of triggering a “quasi-synchronous” communication with others who are following the discussions and contributing to them. These actions lead to externalisation processes of the users’ knowledge and, thus, to one-to-many knowledge transfers as the information created will be accessible online for other users in the future.
Professional online discussion forums are offered by:
* proz.com/
* aquarius.net/questions
* If you have a profile on LinkedIn (linkedin.com) or any other social networking site, you might also want to check if there are groups for professional translators that could be helpful for you. The proz.com group on LinkedIn.com covers any topic related to the language and translation business plus personal experiences, tips and tricks for freelancers, etc.
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get more…
A list containing more links to free-of-charge glossaries, dictionaries, online communities, associations, publications, etc. can be found on the website of Accurapid’s Translation Journal: http://accurapid.com/journal/links.htm
