tranfree issue 24 - 15th January 2001

Language Dictionaries - Useful or Bizarre?

by Phil Naylor

Moderator of General Translation Business Forum

translatortips forums

Continuing my search for the alternative and fun side of translation, the diversity of languages is becoming a fascination of mine.

What is the 4th most spoken language in the world?

This curious site will tell you...

http://www.sil.org/ethnologue/top100.html

An interesting insight for translators I think. Where do your languages come in the top 100? (The answer is Bengali by the way.)

And once you've found that Igbo is the 57th most spoken language, where would you find an Igbo dictionary? Oh yes - there's one here...

http://www.yourdictionary.com/

...along with 239 other language dictionaries. This site is actually quite interesting with a range of language resources. There is a variety of multi-lingual dictionaries with specialities in areas such as science, finance, medicine and dog terminology!

On the more bizarre side, there's a link to a site which is compiling a 17 language dictionary - good luck! Plus a link to a site where you can find out how to write your name in hieroglyphics - Egyptian and Mayan!

And finally, if you translate to/from English, you may be interested in this list of English words that have two meanings - which contradict each other...

http://www-personal.umich.edu/~cellis/antagonym.html

Phil Naylor is Business Development Manager of...

http://www.translatortips.com

helping translators do better business

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