italian online dictionary websites

Outstanding Language Resource Localized in 20 Languages

Bab.la offers free dictionaries, vocabulary sets, flash cards, quizzes, games, conjugation tables, phrases, travel survival guides, a forum and, yes, even more.

The website is localized in Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto (!), French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish and Turkish. Wow!

What does "localized" mean?

"Localized" (localised in British English) means that Bab.la's interface is available in all these languages, so speakers can surf the site in their native tongue. This can be useful for intermediate and advanced learners who want the challenge of surfing in their target language.

Learning Resources for 20 Languages

All the above languages also have learning resources available!

Of special note on Bab.la are the free Survival Guides, downloadable PDFs for quick access to phrases and language essential for travel conversation, complaints and computers. Chatting, computing and complaining has never been so simple!

The phrasebooks available are also of special note, as they cover quite a lot of ground that is often not covered in traditional phrasebooks. These are separated into four main categories: Application, Academic, Business and Personal, and are available for all the languages above - quite a boon to anyone needing quick access to phrases used commonly in application processes and academic, business and personal settings.

To give a quick example of this, you can quickly find useful common phrases for email communication, invoicing, reference letters, announcements and invitations, reservations and more.

Dictionaries, Vocabulary Sets, Quizzes, Games and Conjugation Tables

The dictionary area of Bab.la offers quick and easy translation between all the languages above.

The vocabulary section offers vocab sets for job, school & university, travel, self-study, fun & hobbies and official exams.

The quizzes and games are fun for children and can even help keep teens and adults entertained while learning.

The conjugation tables are quite useful for the appropriate languages, which currently include Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Polish and Portuguese. Some of these are also offered in sets, such as Polish <> German or French <> Italian, for the polyglots out there who like learning another language via a foreign language they already know :)

Tools: Broswser Plugins, Webmaster Widgets, Mobile Apps

All in all, Bab.la offers an amazing amount of material for free! There's even more that hasn't been covered here which is included in their Tools section. This includes dictionary toolbars and plugins for common browsers, dictionary widgets for websites and mobile dictionary apps (the apps are not free).

Free Multilingual Dictionary and Word-Related Apps

TheFreeDictionary.com is a great free dictionary available in over a dozen languages.

The English dictionaries are exceptionally broad-reaching and include Financial and Legal dictionaries.

Also of use to the language learner are their website features, including drag-and-drop rearranging of the interface and double-clicking of any word on the site to see its definition. Word of the day, news, quotations, horoscopes, daily articles and history tidbits provide a flow of updated content to work with.

Also available are word games and the ability to track a personal vocabulary list.

If you are language mobile, they maintain numerous dictionary and word-related apps.

Summary

lingro is a truly useful site with a decidedly free and open approach to multi-lingual dictionaries and online web translation. It provides users with quick and powerful online translation dictionaries and study tools, vocabulary lists and games. The site is "committed to building the Web's largest collection of open dictionaries."

I was struck by the straight-forward, no nonsense approach to open content. The site content is empowered and protected by the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 License. In short, this means the multilingual dictionaries can be copied, adapted and distributed with proper attribution. Equally, content editors must allow their additions to continue to be worked with under the same license. Thus, in an open and free way, lingro appeals to the users for help in creating "relevant translations and definitions" for the these language translation dictionaries.

lingro's website is fast-loading, taking advantage of solid web technology to allow translations to be performed and wordlists to be created without reloading multiple web pages. This can improve productivity considerably for folks with slower internet connections.

Additionally, other sites can be browsed right through the lingro website by typing in the web address in the bottom bar. (View Free Language in Lingro.) This allows any word on the page to be instantly translated when highlighted, and quickly added to a user's vocabulary lists. These lists can then be used in games that aid in memorization. Browsing other sites this way slows down the overall browsing experience, but if language-learning is the goal while reading content from anywhere on the web, lingro effectively adds learning tools to the exercise.

Currently, lingro offers tools and dictionaries for English, Spanish, French, German, Italian and Polish, with more languages on the horizon.

Bravo to the folks at lingro! :)

From Website

lingro's mission is to create an open and free on-line environment for language learners worldwide. In addition to developing exceptional study tools and games, we're committed to creating and maintaining the largest collection of open dictionaries.

The dictionaries we're creating and improving are all available under free licenses to make sure that they will remain useful to the on-line community forever. This means that you will always be able to download and use any of our complete dictionaries to your computer or PDA free of charge!

lingro's programmers have developed many tools to help ensure that our dictionaries will provide you with relevant translations and definitions. However, maintaining and improving dictionaries requires continuous effort, both from us and from our great community.

We're in the process of building detailed pages for each dictionary, allowing our users to add and improve the most imporant translations.

lingro was conceived in August 2005, when Artur decided to practice his Spanish by reading Harry Potter y la piedra filosofál. As a competent but non-expert speaker, he found that looking up new vocabulary took much more time than the reading itself. Frustrated with how slow existing online dictionaries were, he wrote a program to help him translate and learn words in their original context.

lingro's mission is to create an on-line environment that allows anyone learning a language to quickly look up and learn the vocabulary most important to them. Whenever we're developing new tools for lingro or planning the next big step, there are two principles we always consider:

• Knowledge and information essential to human communication and interaction should be free and accessible to everyone. This is why we created the most comprehensive set of free dictionaries available under open licenses so that anyone can contribute, download, redistribute, and modify the dictionaries for their own needs. These licenses guarantee that they will always remain free and useful to society.

• To have the best dictionaries, you need to have the best tools. Every tool we create, from games, quizzes, and study tools to in-context word lookup is designed for you, the user. To us, this means that they should be intuitive, fast, easy to use, and hopefully fun. :-)

Visit lingro.com

Related Internal Links

Resources Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License

Related External Links

Wikipedia Article on Open Content
Wiktionary the Open Dictionary
FreeDict Free Bilingual Dictionaries
Beolingus Dictionary Wörterbuch dicciónario
Liquid Learning is where I found out about lingro.