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Search dictionaries in Google books

This tool is provided for you by Timothy Barton, a professional translator. Please have a look at my business website, at www.anglopremier.com.

Recently, there seems to have been an explosion in the number of bilingual and multilingual technical dictionaries available in Google Books. Thanks to the limited previews, we can access most of the information from many technical dictionaries without having to go out and buy them.

The problem I’ve found is the time it takes to search through all the dictionaries, including, in some cases, more than one edition of the same dictionary, since Google Books sometimes hides different pages in different editions.

By creating a “library” of dictionaries available in Google Books, it is possible to search through as many dictionaries as you like at once. You can also make your library public, which means that you don’t need to create one yourself, as you can use the library I have already created. Here are the results you get if you search for “arrollamiento” in my library.

You can search through my library from this page.

If you use Firefox, you can drag this toolbar button to your browser’s toolbar.

If you use IntelliWebSearch, download this file (right-click and save the target) and import it into IntelliWebSearch by going to “Share-Search settings-Import from file” (tested on v 3.1.0.7). It should appear in the list as “Google Books (perso)”.

I recommend searching without quotes, since many dictionaries replace the main word with a ~ symbol inside entries. So you might not find, for example, “arrollamiento de cobre” if you search with quotes, because the dictionary might start an entry with the word “arrollamiento”, but then say “~ de cobre” when listing the compound terms. The intelliwebsearch search is set not to use quotes.

I designed the library to help me with my own translations, so the main languages included are French, Spanish, Catalan and English. The books included at the time of writing are listed below. I have generated the list automatically, so some books may appear twice where more than one edition is included in my library.

If you find this useful, please leave a comment. If you wish to tell others about it, please direct people to this blog entry (Permanent link: http://www.timtranslates.com/blog/?p=154), rather than straight to my Google Books library. If you find other books that could be included, please let me know and I’ll add them.

Update: This list is already out of date, as I’ve just added several medical dictionaries. It will be impossible to keep up to date, as there are so many more dictionaries in Google Books. Any links posted in the comments will be added as soon as possible.

Termcat, Diccionari de Psiquiatria ©2007
TERMCAT, Centre de Terminologia

Terminologia de la sida
TERMCAT, Centre de Terminologia, Colomer i Artigas Colomer, Catalunya. Termcat (Centre de terminologia)

Termcat, Diccionari d’immunologia ©2005
TERMCAT, Centre de Terminologia, Catalunya. Termcat (Centre de terminologia)

Diccionari UB. Anglès-Català
Diversos

Webster’s Catalan – English Thesaurus Dictionary
Icon Group International, Inc.

Spanish-English Food Dictionary
Vicki Wootton

Carmen’s Worldwide Kitchen – English/Spanish Cookbook
Carmen Kolenda

Diccionario culinario mexicano bilingüe español-inglés: Ingredientes, utensilios, técnicas, bebidas y platillos típicos
Elsa G. Casanova

Glosario IICA del Banco Mundial
James Price Gittinger

Diccionario de sinonimos JURIDICOS Bilingue/ Law Synonymous Bilingual Dictionary: Espanol- Ingles/ English-spanish
Laura Casado, M. Casado, Fanny Lilian tr Krimer

Spanish-English/English-Spanish commercial dictionary: Diccionario de commercio español-inglés/inglés-español
Carlos Reyes Orozco

Diccionario de Finanzas bilingue/ Finances Bilingual Dictionary: Terminología bilingüe: español-inglés, inglés-español
Fabricio V Godoy, Orlando Greco

Diccionario de términos financieros
Eliseu Santandreu

Diccionario Politécnico de Ferrocarriles: DPF= Polytechnisches Wörterbuch Der Eisenbahn
Mario León, Mario León Rodriguez, Fundación de Ferrocarriles Españoles

Diccionario técnico: inglés-español, español-inglés
Federico Beigbeder Atienza

Diccionario de tecnología ferroviaria glossario de términos ferrovarios definidos en español con traducción al alemán, francés, inglés, italiano y portugués
Mario León

English-Spanish and Spanish-English glossary of geoscience terms
Gary L. Prost

English-Spanish and Spanish-English Glossary of Geoscience Terms: Diccionario Ingles-Enspnol Y Espanol-Ingles De Terminos De Geosciencias
G. L. Prost

Glossary of the Petroleum Industry: English/Spanish & Spanish/English
Rebecca L Busby, M. Dolores-Proubasta

Vocabulario de términos científicos: Español-inglés, English Spanish
Javier Martín, VV Staff

DICCIONARIO OXFORD-COMPLUTENSE DE FISICA
Aa.vv

Diccionario de informática, telecomunicaciones y ciencias afines: inglés-español
Mario León

Lexikon, Landschafts- und Stadtplanung: Mehrsprachiges Wörterbuch über Planung, Gestaltung und Schutz der Umwelt
Edward B Ballard, Klaus-Jürgen Evert, Comité de IFLA de Traducción de términos técnicos, International Federation of Landscape Architects

Glosario para administradores y economístas agropecuarios
Guillermo Guerra, Guillermo Guerra E., Alfredo Aguilar V., Aguilar, José Alejandro Sánchez Manzanares

Algemeen juridische beroepsvorming
Lydia Janssen

Diccionario jurídico-empresarial: español-inglés-español
Véronique Bodoutchian-Sáiz

Diccionario de recursos humanos: Organización y dirección
Manuel Fernández-Ríos

Diccionario de términos fiscales 2004: Impuestos sobre la renta y al activo: comentados y correlacionados con las leyes respectivas
Baltazar Feregrino Paredes

Glosario de términos para la administración y gestión de los servicios sanitarios
Carlos C. Álvarez Nebreda

Diccionario de términos económicos
César Sepúlveda L, César Sepúlveda

Contabilidad Financiera/ Financial Accounting
WARREN CARL S., FESS PHILIP E., James M. Reeve, REEVE JAMES M., Philip E Fess

Glosario para administradores y economístas agropecuarios
Guillermo Guerra, Guillermo Guerra E., Alfredo Aguilar V., Aguilar, José Alejandro Sánchez Manzanares

Diccionario de términos financieros
Eliseu Santandreu

Glosario de términos financieros: términos financieros, contables, administrativos, económicos, computacionales y legales
Leonel Vidales Rubí

Spanish Business Dictionary: Multicultural Business Spanish
Morry Sofer

Accounting dictionary: Diccionario de contabilidad
Nora Sánchez

Glosario Internacional Para El Traductor (empat.)

Glosario internacional para el traductor
Marina Orellana

Glosario Internacional Para El Traductor: Glossary of Selected Terms Used in International Organizations
Marina Orellana, John D Chadburn

Glosario de Psiquiatría
John C. Nemiah, F. P. Gallardo, Luis Viani, María Jesús Mardomingo

Aviation terminology
Jorge García de la Cuesta

Diccionario del tren: vocabulario de términos ferroviarios definidos en español con traducción al alemán, francés, inglés, italiano y portugués
Mario León

Diccionario de informatica e Internet: Computer and Internet Technology Definitions In Spanish
Course Technology, Course Technology Staff, Armando S Fernández

Diccionario Técnico: Inglés-Español, Español-Inglés = Technical Dictionary: English-Spanish, Spanish-English
Frederic Beigbeder, Federico Beigbeder Atienza

Diccionario de química física
J M Costa

Commercial Trucking Bilingual Dictionary: English/spanish
Maria Ivon Moya

Diccionario de negocios: inglés-español, español-inglés : contabilidad, administración, finanzas, economía y mercadotecnia
Manuel Urrutia, Manuel Urrutia Raola

Wiley’s English-spanish Spanish-english Dictionary of Psychology and Psychiatry: Diccionario de Psicología Y Psiquiatría Inglés-español Español Inglés
Steven M. Kaplan

English-to-spanish Computer And Internet Dictionary: English-to-spanish Computer and Internet Dictionary
Alicia S. Clark, Eduardo Clark, H. (CON) Eduardo

Salud: Medical Spanish Dictionary and Phrase Book
Bonifacio Contreras

Diccionario de electrónica, informática y energía nuclear
Mariano Mataix Lorda, Miguel Mataix Hidalgo

English-Spanish and Spanish-English glossary of geoscience terms
Gary L. Prost

Diccionario tecnico ingles-espanol, espanol-ingles/ Technical Dictionary English-spanish, Spanish-english
Rafael García Díaz

Routledge Spanish Dictionary of Environmental Technology: Spanish-English/English-Spanish
Miguel A. Gaspar Paricio

Inglés-español.: English-spanish

Routledge Spanish Technical Dictionary: Inglés-español = English-Spanish
Routledge

Diccionario politécnico de las lenguas española e inglesa
Federico Beigbeder Atienza

Glossary of the Petroleum Industry: English-Spanish & Spanish-English
PennWell Publishing Company, Maria-Dolores Proubasta, Pennwell Publishing Company

Routledge Spanish Technical Dictionary: English-Spanish
Routledge, Stephanie Coontz

IMF glossary: English-French-Russian
IMF’s Bureau of Language Services Staff, International Monetary Fund. Technical Documentation, Reference, and Terminology Section, International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund. Bureau of Language Services. Russian Division

IMF glossary: English-French-Arabic
IMF’s Bureau of Language Services Staff, IMF’s Bureau of Language Services, International Monetary Fund

IMF glossary: English-French-Spanish
International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund. Reference, Terminology, and Documentation Section, International Monetary Fund. b Terminology Working Group

IMF glossary: English-French-German
International Monetary Fund. Reference, Terminology, and Documentation Section, International Monetary Fund

Imf Glossary: English-French-Russian
IMF’s Bureau of Language Services Staff, International Monetary Fund FMI IMF’s Bureau of Language Services Staff Bureau of Language Services, IMF’s Bureau of Language Services, International Monetary Fund

IMF glossary: English-French-Spanish
International Monetary Fund. Technical Documentation, Reference, and Terminology Section, International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund. Bureau of Language Services. Terminology Working Group

Dictionnaire des marchés financiers: plus de 2000 termes et expresions expliqués et traduits en cinq langues : anglais, allemand, espagnol, italien, néerlandais
Joseph Antoine, Marie-Claire Capiau-Huart

100 IFRS Financial Ratios / IFRS Indicateurs Financiers Dictionnaire Anglais / Français
Ulrich Wiehle, Michael Diegelmann, Cometis AG <Wiesbaden, Henryk Deter, Peter Noel Schömig, Michael Rolf

IMF glossary: English-French-Arabic
International Monetary Fund, International Monetary Fund. Bureau of Language Services

Dictionnaire anglais-français, français-anglais de la poste et des affaires postales
Vera Mihailovich-Dickman

Approche linguistique des problèmes de traduction anglais–français
Hélène Chuquet, Michel Paillard

Dictionnaire des sciences et techniques du pétrole: anglais-français, français-anglais
Magdeleine Moureau, Gerald Brace, Institut français du pétrole

Dictionnaire technologique français-anglais-allemand: avec leurs diverses acceptions et applications, tous les termes techniques employés dans les arts industriels et dans la mécanique, la physique et la chimie manufacturières : tableau comparatif des monnaies, poids et mesures
Alexandre Tolhausen, Louis Tolhausen, Gardissal (Durand)

Moby Dick (Webster’s French Thesaurus Edition)
Icon Reference, Herman Melville

Routledge French Technical Dictionary: Anglais-français = English-French
Arden, Neil Clements, Routledge

Merriam-Webster’s French-English Dictionary
Merriam-Webster, Inc, Merriam-Webster

Multilingual technical dictionary on irrigation and drainage: Dictionnaire technique multilingue des irrigations et du drainage. English-French; anglais-français
International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage

Dictionnaire français-anglais des mots tronqués
Fabrice Antoine

Dictionnaire d’automatique de génie électrique et de productique: anglais-français : français-anglais
Pierre Borne, Nigel Quayle, Madan G. Singh

Dictionnaire d’informatique et d’Internet: anglais-français
Jean-Guy Grenier

Dictionary of electrical engineering: English, German, French, Dutch, Russian
Y. N. Luginsky

Dictionnaire du Génie Civil, de l’Architecture, et de la Construction.: Matériaux et technologies, édition bilingue français-anglais
Éric Serge Bon

A Naval and Military Technical Dictionary of the French Language. Part 1. French-English
Robert Burn

Routledge French Dictionary of Environmental Technology: French-English/English-French
Terence Gordon, Routledge

Civil Engineering in French: a guide to the language and practice of civil engineering in French-speaking countries
A. Paulus

Dictionary of Civil Engineering: English-French
Jean-Paul Kurtz

Routledge French Dictionary of Telecommunications: French-English/English-French
Stuart Wittering, Routledge (Firm), Neil Clements, Sinda López

Dictionary of Building and Civil Engineering: English/French French/English
Don Montague

Dictionnaire Technique Anglais: Volume 2, Anglais-français = French Technical Dictionary : Volume 2, English-French.

French dictionary of information technology: French/English, English/French
Terry R. Pyper

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26 thoughts on “Search dictionaries in Google books

  1. Yes, all my idea! Been trying to work out how to search in more than one Google Book for a while, then realised there’s a built-in function. I had quite a few links already. By clinking on the links to “related books”, I was quickly able to add several dozen to the library.

  2. Ho acabo de provar i em sembla molt útil. Perfecte per a la traducció tècnica que tinc entre mans ara mateix. Gràcies Tim.

  3. ¡Qué bárbaro! Estoy entusiasmada. Pero oye, ¿cómo has hecho eso? ¡Es magia!
    Mil millones de gracias.

  4. ¡Muchas gracias, Tim!
    Muchas veces he tenido el problema que comentas: encuentras varios libros buenos en Google Books, pero es muy difícil buscar en ellos de la misma forma que buscarías en una web o en un documento cualquiera. Creo que tu idea nos va a hacer la vida más fácil a muchos traductores.
    Gracias por compartirla.

  5. Thanks for sharing this with Traduccion en España, Tim. I didn’t know they had added this new feature. It looks really useful.

  6. Hi Tim:
    Thank you so much for making this excellent idea available for everyone else. It is really appreciated.

  7. Great work, Tim! And very generous on your part to share it! I will be posting to my blog on this and recommending your toolbar to my colleagues at the Spanish Translation Service of the United Nations Secretariat.

  8. Thank you, Sir, for taking the time to compile this excellent list of resources. I’m sure it will come in handy.

  9. Muchas gracias por compartir este recurso con la lista de Traducción en España. Me va a ser tremendamente útil.

    Thanks a lot!

  10. Moltes gràcies Tim!
    Ets un geni.
    N’estic segur que em serà molt útil, especialment per que els idiomes en els què treballo són el català, el castellà i l’anglès.
    Molt atentament,
    Fran

  11. Thanks for posting this Tim! I’ve been using your virtual library for a few months now. It’s a lifesaver, and it’s also helped me pick out some dictionaries to buy in paper form.

  12. Brilliant! Many thanks for this – a great help, especially as I found you while trying to locate something I viewed through Google Books last night but forgot to save.

  13. You are a star Tim! Great idea. This will help so many people once they get wind of it. Have you raised this as a topic on any of the translation portals: Proz? AIPTI? etc

  14. Hi Tim,
    Excellent work, and thank you for sharing it :)

    I was wondering though, how to use the toolbar button for Firefox you mention. I can´t seem to drag it.

    Thanks again!
    Euge

  15. I note that you list my “Dictionary of Building and Civil Engineering” amongst those consultable in your library drawn up with the aid of Google Books.

    You also wrote:
    “Recently, there seems to have been an explosion in the number of bilingual and multilingual technical dictionaries available in Google Books. Thanks to the limited previews, we can access most of the information from many technical dictionaries without having to go out and buy them.”

    As an author I’m naturally delighted that you may wish to consult my book, but you can hardly expect me to be sympathetic to your desire to practise as a professional translator “without having to go out and buy” it.

    Just let me say my piece for a moment.

    My dictionary took me YEARS to produce, and cost me a bomb in expenses (not reimbursed by the publisher), and a helluva lot of hard, grinding work. My royalties amount to 10% of the wholesale price per copy, which recently have been hardly enough to live on for a week a year.

    You continue: “The problem I’ve found is the time it takes to search through all the dictionaries, . . . ” Well as a professional translator, that’s what you’re paid for, at a rate which probably exceeds my hourly rate for writing dictionaries, probably by a factor of 10-20.

    Don’t expect any sympathy from me, old chap.

    I’m forwarding these comments to my publisher.

  16. Hi Don

    Thanks for commenting on my blog. I appreciate your input, and I hope you’ll at least appreciate my decision to approve your comments for publication, despite the criticism aimed at me. Before writing a complete response, I would like more time to reflect on your comments, but for now I would like to say that I haven’t done any “cracking” or anything like that, and the tool I am suggesting using is one provided by Google. It is Google who, rightly or wrongly, digitalise the books and make them searchable. I believe that your main qualm should be with Google, not with me.

    I should perhaps also add that as a result of using this tool, I have bought one of the dictionaries. I should also quote Steven Capsuto’s comment: “Thanks for posting this Tim! I’ve been using your virtual library for a few months now. It’s a lifesaver, and it’s also helped me pick out some dictionaries to buy in paper form.”

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