The Linguee website might be of use to some of you, as it is an online bilingual dictionary for the language pairs English-German, English-French, English-Spanish, and English-Portuguese. It’s become quite popular and it might help those of you who work with those languages. Perhaps Linguee will expand beyond those tongues in the near future.
See: Brave New Words
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United States
Local time: 13:39
German to English
I have been using the German-English version for at least a year. What is excellent about it is that it will find odd phrases as well as words, and (the best) it gives you ALL of the samples it finds with the source (and whether it is verified) so you can choose the source/translation closest to your context. Sometimes it's just interesting to see all of the variants. I highly recommend it.
United States
Local time: 16:39
Member (2011)
English to German
... if you just can't find the correct term, then it might really be good.
However, I have often found terms or phrases that were not correct.
If that suits you...
[Edited at 2011-11-16 04:42 GMT]
Austria
Local time: 22:39
German to English
+ ...
but can be valuable if you are very careful yourself.
Germany
Local time: 22:39
German to English
I have heard from some people that the quality is better for the direction English>German, but for German>English, I generally prefer other sites.
The problem with Linguee is that it works purely with (often badly) translated texts instead of parallel texts (i.e. comparable texts written in the target language by native speakers).
That said, Linguee is a pretty good source for specifically German material (i.e. terms and texts that have no Engl... See more
I have heard from some people that the quality is better for the direction English>German, but for German>English, I generally prefer other sites.
The problem with Linguee is that it works purely with (often badly) translated texts instead of parallel texts (i.e. comparable texts written in the target language by native speakers).
That said, Linguee is a pretty good source for specifically German material (i.e. terms and texts that have no English parallels): Website passages related to the Telemediengesetz are a good example.
Normally, the only time I use a bilingual dictionary while translating is as a sort of bilingual thesaurus, when a word that I know just refuses to occur to me or when I want some quick suggestions because I am not fully satisfied with a choice. I strongly prefer dict.cc for this task: it is not any more reliable, but it is much quicker to use (or ignore).
Sincerely,
Michael ▲ Collapse
Spain
Local time: 22:39
Spanish to English
+ ...
The problem with Linguee is that it works purely with (often badly) translated texts instead of parallel texts (i.e. comparable texts written in the target language by native speakers).
Exactly. It can be useful to professionals trained to discern sheep from goats, but a minefield for the lazy, inept or unwary.
United Kingdom
French to English
+ ...
It does need to be used with great care and it is only as good as the translations it finds out there on the web. One advantage is that it gives relatively large samples. This usually provides sufficient context to be able to judge the quality of the translation, but it does turn up some truly awful ones!
I find it most useful as a thesaurus or memory jogger, when I know there's another way of saying something, but just can't think of it quickly.
United States
Local time: 16:39
German to English
It does need to be used with great care and it is only as good as the translations it finds out there on the web. One advantage is that it gives relatively large samples. This usually provides sufficient context to be able to judge the quality of the translation, but it does turn up some truly awful ones!
I find it most useful as a thesaurus or memory jogger, when I know there's another way of saying something, but just can't think of it quickly.
I've been astonished at some of the nonsense I've seen on Linguee, ranging from mistranslations and inappropriate terminology to untranslated source terms in target sentences. On the other hand, I've seen phrasing that didn't quite work in my context, but which called to mind usable alternatives for my purposes.
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