Dictionaries

[kaji_sensei]

Just for curiosity's sake, I've been wondering what languages out there people have been having trouble finding reliable online dictionaries for. I've lucked out in that Japanese has several amazing resources (thanks in large part to Jim Breen's EDICT project), and I've found some good resources for Korean if you feel comfortable navigating a site

Comments

[ithaka_girl]

For Russian:
www.multitran.ru

[5x6]

I second this.

[shanrina]

For Hindi, the best one I've found is www.shabdkosh.com but it's really not that great. I use it for English-Hindi, but only if I'm confident I'll be able to recognize the specific word when I see it because some of their definitions/words are just plain weird and I want to make sure I'm using the right one. If I hear a word in Hindi and want to know what it means, though, or if I want to translate an English word and have absolutely no idea what the Hindi word might be, I'll use a paper dictionary (at last count I had six or seven, so unless I seriously misheard the word it's bound to be in one of them).

[muckefuck]

It's really more of a glossary than a dictionary, isn't it, with word-for-word equivalences rather than proper definitions. Despite its age, I find Platts' dictionary more useful much of the time.

[shanrina]

Thanks! Hadn't seen that one.

[sleepinbeast]

I use http://dict.leo.org/ frequently for English/German. It's fairly big by now, but it only works well if you already have a good grasp of the languagee, because it doesn't really comment on how the words are used.

I'm a German native speaker, but I have invested in four books from the Duden series and have yet to regret it: Synonymwörterbuch (thesaurus), richtiges und gutes Deutsch, die deutsche Rechtschreibung (dictionary for orthography of German words) and Fremdwörterbuch (dictionary for words of foreign origin). I use them several times a week, although I'm not even writing very much at the moment.

[sleepinbeast]

Oh and I often use wikipedia. The German wikipedia is one of the biggest, and because the articles are linked between languages, you can just type in the English word and then hit the "Deutsch" button for the German article.

[kaji_sensei]

hehehe...I use this strategy quite frequently myself, makes for a nice way to clarify when there are several synonyms for a word you need translated and can't quite pick out which is right for the context in question.

[kaji_sensei]

Your mentioning Duden reminds me, is it safe to assume that most resources for German these days adhere to the spelling reform, or are there those still holding out on it? I hear that actual adherence in everyday writing is spotty at best, so I'm sometimes a bit confused if this has transferred over to German-language reference materials or not.

[leeperek]

There's a problem with EN<->Danish - there's only one free online dict (the one at dicts.info) and it's pretty bad. There are some paid ones though.

[graey42]

http://www.travlang.com does Danish. I'm not necessarily saying it's a good dictionary, but it's free.

[baby_rhino]

Oh, this is a very useful commentary, thanks a lot!
If only anyone knew a good Russian-Polish online dictionary...