Multitran
Encyclopedia
Multitran is an Internet-based dictionary
system.
The following dictionaries to be offered soon:
The developer of the Multitran software is Andrey Pominov, Moscow
.
Currently, Multitran is one of the largest and most popular web dictionaries in Runet
. Every day, over 90 thousand people visit Multitran.ru, and over 1.5 million search requests are processed.
Every user of Multitran can ask a question concerning translation on the Multitran forums
. Multitran users also arrange offline meetings from time to time, so called 'pow-wows'. Such pow-wows were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev.
Dictionary
A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...
system.
Languages
Multitran includes the following online dictionaries:- EnglishEnglish languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
-RussianRussian languageRussian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Russian-English - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
-Russian and Russian-German - SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
-Russian and Russian-Spanish - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
-Russian and Russian-French - DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
-Russian and Russian-Dutch - ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
-Russian and Russian-Italian - LatvianLatvian languageLatvian is the official state language of Latvia. It is also sometimes referred to as Lettish. There are about 1.4 million native Latvian speakers in Latvia and about 150,000 abroad. The Latvian language has a relatively large number of non-native speakers, atypical for a small language...
-Russian and Russian-Latvian - EstonianEstonian languageEstonian is the official language of Estonia, spoken by about 1.1 million people in Estonia and tens of thousands in various émigré communities...
-Russian and Russian-Estonian - JapaneseJapanese languageis a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
-Russian and Russian-Japanese - AfrikaansAfrikaansAfrikaans is a West Germanic language, spoken natively in South Africa and Namibia. It is a daughter language of Dutch, originating in its 17th century dialects, collectively referred to as Cape Dutch .Afrikaans is a daughter language of Dutch; see , , , , , .Afrikaans was historically called Cape...
-Russian and Russian-Afrikaans - English-German and German-English
- English-Japanese and Japanese-English
The following dictionaries to be offered soon:
- Azerbaijanian-Russian and Russian-Azerbaijanian
- NorwegianNorwegian languageNorwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...
-Russian and Russian-Norwegian - TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
-Russian and Russian-Turkish - UkrainianUkrainian languageUkrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
-Russian and Russian-Ukrainian
The developer of the Multitran software is Andrey Pominov, Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
.
Currently, Multitran is one of the largest and most popular web dictionaries in Runet
Runet
Currently Internet access in Russia is available to businesses and home users in various forms, including dial-up, cable, DSL, FTTH, mobile, wireless and satellite...
. Every day, over 90 thousand people visit Multitran.ru, and over 1.5 million search requests are processed.
Every user of Multitran can ask a question concerning translation on the Multitran forums
Internet forum
An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived...
. Multitran users also arrange offline meetings from time to time, so called 'pow-wows'. Such pow-wows were held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kiev.
Features
- Multitran's database contains over 10 million terms
- Every registered user can expand the dictionaries online (over 1000 translators are active contributors)
- Alphabetical, morphological, word-combination search
- Simultaneous search in the dictionaries, forums, and in the database of English and Russian parallel sentences
Advantages and disadvantages of Multitran
The Multitran base was created by scanning a wealth of paper dictionaries and combining all the translations in one database. The huge volume of the base is both an advantage and a disadvantage because:- Multitran may offer well over 100 translations for a word, which complicates the task of choosing the right equivalent for beginning language learners, though it comes very handy for language professionals.
- Search results often give duplicate translations of a term for various disciplines.
- Multitran may give very narrow meanings of a term, suitable only for very limited contexts.
- Multitran has a feature enabling users to check the equivalent translations, but checking each and every term may require dozens of man-years of work. Every registered user can issue a warning about identified mistakes, so until a mistake is corrected, it remains marked accordingly. Multitran users have reported about 8000 mistakes using this functionality, and most of them have been corrected. Thus, users not only add their own terms (added by users are more than 180 thousand words and phrases), but also help to clean the database from mistakes.
- The feature allowing every registered user to contribute is an advantage, but it also carries the risk that mistranslations are added to the database, because they are added arbitrarily by Multitran users and depend on the level of the contributing individual user's knowledge, which may not be up to the mark.
- Multitran.ru is down quite often