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Update: This list is already out of date, as I’ve just added several medical dictionaries.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

This is awful Euro-English.

What is particularly surprising is that the UK is involved in the project, yet nobody pointed how ugly, awful and ungrammatical the name of this project is.

…but I just love a translation that I’ve just come up with. The original was “Hoteles tan exclusivos como nuestros clientes”. After initially coming up with horrible translations like “Hotels that are as exclusive as our guests”, I suddenly thought of “Exclusive hotels for exclusive guests”.

A native speaker can correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d say that this structure would not work in Spanish (“hoteles exclusivos para clientes exclusivos”). But the repetition of the word “exclusive” is not a problem in English; it helps to get the message across.

For professional translations, visit timtranslates.com.

Most of my readers who are translators have probably come across the WordReference dictionary toolbar buttons. You can find them here.

These toolbars open a word you have selected in a new window.

I don’t use the version of the buttons now available on the WordReference site, but an older version. I prefer the older versions because they pop up a small form if you have no text selected. Most of the time we’re looking up words in our source text, not words we have open in our browser, so we want a window to type our word in. Also, my version (I can’t remember whether that’s how I downloaded it, or whether I adapted the code myself) opens up in the current tab, not in a new window. Much more practical, I find.

Below are the WordReference buttons I use (only for the languages I work with). If you have Firefox, you can just drag them to the toolbar. If you use Internet Explorer, you should stop doing so, but if you really wish to continue with Internet Explorer, follow the complicated instructions here, however, I seem to remember finding that my buttons don’t work in Internet Explorer.

English definition
Spanish definition (RAE)
French-English translation
English-French translation
Spanish-English translation
English-Spanish translation

With these buttons, if you have selected text, it will search for the selected text; if not, a window asks you to enter the search term.

But you don’t have to use only buttons that people give you. You can use the above to create your own for any online dictionary where the search term appears at the end of the URL.

Let’s take the new Catalan dictionary (DIEC2) as an example. Even if you don’t work with Catalan, follow this step-by-step guide, then just delete it from your toolbar afterwards and apply the same principle to other online pages.

1. Go to the dictionary’s main search page.
2. Type in the word prova.
3. The toolbar should now show “http://dlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=prova&operEntrada=0”.
4. In this case our search term does not appear right at the end. However, anything appearing after an ampersand (&) is usually just adding extra information regarding the presentation of a page, and can usually be removed. Remove “&operEntrada=0” from the link and press enter.
5. The URL still works without that information. Now drag the current tab to the toolbar (you need to have more than one tab open to do this, so press CTRL+T if you only have one tab open).
6. We now need to adapt this link so it doesn’t always go to the definition for prova but instead to the definition of whatever word we want.
7. Let’s use as our template the Spanish-English translation button that I gave above. Drag it to the toolbar if you have not already done so. By opening up the properties of the button you can obtain the location, which is as follows: javascript:Qr=document.getSelection();if(!Qr){void(Qr=prompt(‘Translate%20to%20English:’,”))};if(Qr)location.href=’http://www.wordreference.com/es/en/translation.asp?spen=’+escape(Qr)
8. All we need to do is replace the reference to the WordReference site with the URL from the DIEC site. Copy the above into Notepad, then replace everything between the final set of single quotes with “http://dlc.iec.cat/results.asp?txtEntrada=” (the URL we found after searching in the DIEC, but with the search term removed from the end, since this will be variable).
9. You may also want to change where it says “Translate%20to%20English” to something more appropriate for this button, such as “Catalan%20definition” (the “%20” is just a space bar).
10. Now copy this to the clipboard (CTRL+>C), then in Firefox right-click on the DIEC button you have just added, click on properties, and delete everything in the “Location” field, replacing it with the contents of the clipboard (press CTRL+V).
11. Click on Save Changes, then test your new button.

Of course, it’s a lot easier if someone else has done the work for you, so here are a few others I also use. Please post any of yours in the comments!

Merriam-Webster English
GREC Catalan dictionary
dict4.com Spanish<>English
French-English search in Quebec terminology database

In a separate post, I will explain how to add buttons to search in Google Books. Watch this space!<

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On this page, the heading under video reads “Chelsea win puts us back in title race – Wenger”.

My first reaction upon reading this was that it meant that Chelsea had won a game against one of Arsenal’s title rivals, thus helping Arsenal. But my knowledge of the context meant that I knew this wasn’t possible. What it meant was that a win by Arsenal against Chelsea (in tomorrow’s game) would put Arsenal back in the title race.

All the other languages I know would not allow such an ambiguous sentence in the translation. You’d have to either translate it as “win against Chelsea” or “win for Chelsea”. And this is where machine translation is really found wanting. The machine translation does not have the knowledge of context that we have as humans.

Another example of this would be the Catalan sentence “els pinguins saben nadar però no volen”. This could either mean “penguins can swim but don’t fly”, or “penguins swim, but they don’t want to”. Only our general knowledge tells us that the first sentence is the meaning we’re looking for.

Business is booming, and I’ve been so busy with my business that I haven’t had much time to write on my blog. I had loads to say about the end to the Formula 1 season, but that can wait. I’d like to try to write more posts about my day-to-day business: translation.

Have you noticed how often we use the word business in English? You probably have if you translate out of English. It is such a versatile word that there are countless possible translations into other languages, depending on the context. I’d never really thought about it before, until I stumbled upon this little gem from our friends in Quebec (they really do provide so many resources to those of us working between French and English). Although the article examines translations between English and French, it should provide plenty of ideas for those translating from English into other Romance languages.

The article starts by categorising the different usages of the word business in English. At the end of the article, there is an alphabetical list, which is pretty easy to import into a terminology database.

This is just one of many articles on accountancy terminology provided by the Ordre des comptables agréés du Québec. The rest can be found here.