Summary

french.about.com is packed full of information for beginner to intermediate French learners as well as teachers of those levels. In fact, there is so much content there that listing it here would take too much time! Instead, this article will highlight some of the things you can find on the site, and leave the rest for you to find on the site.

Of special note are the start learning section, practice materials, teacher resources, audio lab, grammar section, vocabulary section, proficiency tests, verb conjugator and the quizzes and tests area.

There is a lot more there, and it's all accessible for free. :)

From Website

Learning French is an ongoing and involved process. You can't learn French overnight, and you probably can't learn on your own, no matter how many books and tapes you buy.

What you can do is use this free website to supplement your learning: to get another explanation of something you didn't understand, to get extra practice between classes, and to brush up on what you once learned but have now all but forgotten.

Learn French at About offers hundreds of lessons and thousands of sound files to help you learn French.

Visit french.about.com

Summary

French-Flashcards.com is a fast-loading, useful site for French learners to manage and practice vocabulary lists (words and sentences). There are many existing word and sentence lists created by other users that you can snag and use right away. You can also create your own lists and sentences on-the-fly and test yourself until you know them all. As a result, this resource works for French students of all levels, beginner to advanced. The self-testing is done via built-in flashcard software that you control.

The website has an integrated dictionary that gives explanations of individual terms and includes examples of how these are used in real sentences. In addition, when you view a sentence, you can scroll over the French words and view annotations. NB: You can copy and paste any French text you want into the site's Text Analyzer and it provides you with what you see below (see grey scroll-over pop-up in image for annotation). Words that are not in the system with be displayed in grey, such as the word "Mike" below.

Something you might find useful is the site's Sentence of the Day email. This sends a different sentence every day complete with a translation of the sentence.

If you upgrade to a premuim membership (~$5/month) you can also hear audio for the sentence. In fact, the only thing you cannot do without a membership is hear the audio on the site.

Bravo Oliver for this excellent site and keep up the great work!

From Website

Introduction

Our first flashcard website started in 2005. A lot of time has been invested to design an efficient system which enables you to learn new words in the shortest time possible. Make sure to read this introduction carefully so you understand how the system works. Once you know how this website works and you use it regularly it will become an important tool to learn French. Ideally make time each day for 2 or 3 sessions a day, each lasting about 10 - 15 minutes.

Once you have created your own account you can set up your own word list. There are basically two different modes on how to add new words to your word list. One is automatically and one is manually.

Automatically

If you choose "automatically" then the system will choose random words for you to practice. Within the Auto-Mode there are two different choices. The first is "completely random words" and the second is "frequent words first". Obviously if you are a beginner you should focus on those frequent words first, so if you chose the level "Complete Newbie", "Basic" or "Intermediate" the system will just do that. If you chose the level "Upper Intermediate" or "Advanced" completely random words will be added to your word list.

Manually

If you would like more control over which word you learn switch to the manually mode. In this mode you have to choose which word you will learn, not the system. There are a few ways to add words manually. The first is to use the search function in the navigation bar on the left-hand side. You can search for French or English words. On the result page every found word has an "Add Word" link next to it. Click it to add this word to your personal list. After you click it the link text will change to "Remove Word", so you can immediately remove the word from your list if you have added it by mistake.

The second way to add words manually is to click the link "Add new Words" in the navigation. This will show random words for you to add. They are sorted by frequency, the most common words will be at the top of this random list, while the rare words will be at the bottom of the list.

Finally you can add words manually by browsing through the "public word lists". These lists have been created by other users. These public lists normally have a common theme, like "animals", "computer terms", "fruits", etc. You can either pick some words of these public lists or copy the whole list.

You can also combine these methods, add words automatically but also occasionally add words manually.

Adding words automatically is the default setting. If you do not want to add words automatically you can change this in the settings.

The Loop

The main problem of learning new words is that over time word lists grow very big. This means that the learner feels overwhelmed and the time between word repetitions becomes too long. Thats where the Loop comes to the rescue.

The Loop consists of a subset of only 20 words out of your word list. This means you can concentrate on a few words only, until you have memorized them properly. To keep a flashcard in the loop click on the "Loop" button.

If you have become familiar with a new word which is in the Loop click on "1 day", "7 days", "30 days" etc. Which means that the word will be shown only after the indicated time has passed. If you know a word very well click on "30 Days" or "3 Months" so the word will be shown only after a long time. After the indicated time has passed the word will be put into the Queue.

Once you remove a word from the Loop another one will be put in the Loop. The system will first check if there are any words in the "Queue". If the Queue is empty and you are in Auto-Mode the system will choose a new word for you and add it to your word list and into the Loop. If you are in the "manual mode" the system will tell you that you need to add more words in order to continue.

If you click "Remove Word" then the word will be removed from your word list. "Permanently Block" will do the same except that it will also prevent the word from coming back in the "Automatic Mode" where the system chooses words for you. By default there are 20 words in the loop. You can change the number of words in the loop in the settings.

Word Lists

If the Loop system sounds too complicated to you, then you can also set up simple word lists. To do this click on "[Manage Lists]" in the navigation. Then click on "[Add List]" to create a new list. If you want to share this word list with other users select the box "Public List". If you want to immediately add new words to this list select "Also Activate". You can create as many lists as you want. In the navigation bar you can always see which list is active at the moment. Words will be added to the currently active list. To go back to the master list (which uses the loop), click on "[Manage Lists]" and the "[Leave List Mode]".

Visit French-Flashcards.com

Summary

MeGlobe is a web-based instant messenger client with realtime translation into 14+ languages. This Jabber-powered tool lets folks chat interlingually. Users are encouraged to help improve the translation engine's algorithm by suggesting better translations when things fall short.

Languages currently available with MeGlobe.com IM/translation client are: Arabic, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

In addition to Jabber, MeGlobe leverages other Free Software projects to build their foundation: Drupal (main site), MediaWiki (help wiki), phpBB (forum). Somehow they managed to get all these working together with one account in Drupal! Nice :)

From Website

MeWho?

MeGlobe™ was built to diminish language barriers from online communication. Our free web client lets you type in your own language, but sends a translated version, in real time, specific to the native tongue of whomever you are chatting with. With MeGlobe™ there is no such thing as 'lost in translation.'

Signing up is quick, easy and FREE. Just click on "Signup," give us some basic info and you're ready to start chatting with people all over the world. No downloads are required, you don't need to install anything and you can use MeGlobe™ from any computer with a browser and Internet connection.

We live in a highly connected global village. Isn't it time we take language out of the equation so we can talk to our neighbors?

Community Powered

We don't throw the word beta around because it's "cool." The fact is, machine translation just isn't ready for primetime. Human-2-human (H2H) interaction, ie chatting with a native buddy from Uzbekistan about last night's rerun of Baywatch just isn't feasible…yet.

Every time you send a message on MeGlobe's™ network you have the opportunity to make our translations better. When you notice that a translation on MeGlobe™ is a little off, let us know by "editing" the translation. Your buddy will immediately see the corrected translation and at the same time you are contributing to our knowledge base.

These contributions are used to teach MeGlobe™ to become a better translator. Every correction from the community brings us closer to our goal of erasing the borders of language.

Creating a universal translator has huge potential, but requires lots of work. By no means has it been perfected, but with your help we're getting better every day.

Put simply, MeGlobe is an instant messaging web application on steroids. While traditional IM tools like Gchat or AIM let you connect with friends, MeGlobe lets you chat online with people even if they don’t speak your language.

MeGlobe is powered by Jabber software, often referred to as "the Linux of instant messaging."

If you ever notice a translation is wrong, you can edit it by clicking the square in the chat box. Your correction will help our algorithm learn the correct translation, so you won’t have to make that edit again.

Visit MeGlobe.com

Summary

The FreeLanguage.com.ua Online Translators page has 35+ resources listed for translating to and from many languages online - surprise - for free!

A list of these will be started here soon, but this is already a pretty comprehensive list of the freebie translators available online. Of course, some are better than others, but this site lists lots of them with brief descriptions that are helpful.

From Website

FreeLanguage.com.ua is a directory dedicated to language learning online. Browse free online language courses, language lessons, phonetic resources, language tutorials, language study centers, online dictionaries etc.

Visit the FreeLanguage.com.ua Online Translators Directory

From Website

The Ultimate Language Tool (web page translation, translated search, auto translation, text translation, language resources, learning languages & more)

Main Features

FoxLingo Web Page Translation - Translates full web pages (over 1,000 different language pairs)
FoxLingo Translated Search - Searches foreign pages using terms written in your language
FoxLingo Auto Translation - Automatically translates websites by recognizing their domain
FoxLingo Text Translation - Translates text entered in the search box or selected on any web page
FoxLingo Language Resources - Over 90 language services (encyclopedias, text-to-speech, etc.)
FoxLingo Ixquick - Metasearch engine with unique features, language search and complete privacy
FoxLingo Learning Languages - Over 100 links to language learning sites for a variety of languages
FoxLingo Freeware - FoxLingo is completely free and contains no adware or spyware
FoxLingo Complete Privacy - FoxLingo does not take any information from its users

Supports 45 languages & over 1,000 different language pairs

Afrikaans, Arabic, Aranese, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Malay, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Portuguese Brazilian, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Spanish, Spanish Latin American, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Welsh

Uses 34 free online web page translator services

Worldlingo.com, Tranexp.com, Google.com, Abacho.co.uk, Altavista.com, Bestiland.thread.ne.jp, Eigo-navi.com, Elmundo.es, Excite.co.jp, Freetranslation.com, Gencat.cat, Gts-translation.com, Ibm.com, Imtranslator.com, Internostrum.com, Interpret.co.za, Linguamatix.com, Lingvo.org, Nazgol.co.il, Nifty.amikai.com Ocn.ne.jp, Oesi.cervantes.es, Online-Translator.com, Opentrad.org, Sli.uvigo.es, Solvingmaze.com, Toggletext.com, Tr.voila.fr, Translatica.pwn.pl, Translendium.es, Vil-net.dyndns.org Yahoo.com, Xixona.dlsi.ua.es, 220.194.61.120

FoxLingo uses Languid for Language Identification.

Comments

An indispensable tool for people working on the web in multiple languages and requiring instant translation on the fly of entire websites.

Visit FoxLingo Developer Website
Visit the FoxLingo Extension page on Mozilla.org

Software License

This software is freeware. View the user policy.