Ultralingua
Encyclopedia
Ultralingua is a single-click
and drag-and-drop
multilingual translation dictionary, thesaurus, and language reference utility. The full suite of Ultralingua language tools is available free online without the need for download and installation.
As well as its online products, the developer offers premium downloadable language software with extended features and content for Macintosh
and Windows
computer platforms, smartphone
s, and other hand held devices.
, a ‘hotkey’ feature allows the user to click on a word in any program that uses editable text including web browsers and PDF
documents, and source code
. When a word is clicked, the translation or definition is displayed in a small pop-up window. The hotkey tool does not require previous launching of the software application.
The word stemming function allows searches from inflected forms of a word into the root word, such as in French, allez → aller), with further extension by lemmatisation
. Full verb conjugation in all tenses, and number conversion from digits to text in the available languages (e.g. "123" → "one hundred twenty-three"), are available through the program interface, as well as free access to online examples of language in use, and a discussion forum moderated by linguists and lexicographers.
The search algorithms are tolerant of capitalisation, minor misspelling, and omitted accents and diacritics
. Extensive lexical information is provided including irregular plurals, irregular verb forms, phrases and examples of use, American English
and British English
variations, and grammar references. IPA transcription is given, while several language modules are also enabled for text-to-speech.
The application interface can be either permanently displayed above or alongside any other open program windows, or allowed to ‘float’ above open windows and is resizable.
An integrated learning tool provides a full screen flashcard
feature that can work with the words in the language databases, and user-added definitions.
had the idea of creating a French dictionary that allowed the user to look up words on the fly with drag-and-drop
technology, to and from a work in progress.
The dictionary program was first developed for the Apple Macintosh only. It was launched as freeware
in 1997 under the name of Le Francophile and distributed mainly on the cover floppy discs of Mac magazines. It was commercialised in 1999 as shareware
as a fully functional application that could be obtained online from download sites. By the year 2000, with the collaboration of additional specialists in lexicography and linguistics, the product range had expanded to include language modules for Spanish and German, and was released for Windows
. A French-German module was added in 2002.
Focusing on the Apple iPod
, in 2004 a low-memory, budget range of dictionaries including up to 80,000 indexed entries, along with idiomatic expressions, slang, and indications of usage was introduced under the brand name Accio. The versions for iPod
include audio files of common phrases recorded from native speakers, and is available for the five major language pairs. Concurrent with the opening of the Apple App Store in 2008, the language tools were launched for the iPhone
.
The major languages and features of the dictionary program have been offered free online since 2005 and take in to account all the improvements of regular releases.
By 2009 the software package was offering 17 dictionaries and additional language tools for widely spoken world languages.
Version 7.1.4 (Mac) and version 7.0.0.0 (Windows), released in the fall of 2008 and May 2009 respectively, incorporated a completely redesigned GUI
and addressed many of the suggestions for improvement made in an exhaustive independent evaluation of version 6.0 by the State University of Texas (CALICO
).
Though many people have been involved in the development of Ultralingua's code and data, the founders and main contributors to its development are the Chair Professors of Carleton's Linguistics and Computer Science departments. Elements of Ultralingua software have been developed in collaboration with Princeton University
, and The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, by Carnegie Mellon University
. Additional code libraries used include contributions by CTGradient, ShortcutRecorder (BSD License), PTHotKey, Sparkle for application updates, and the hotkey code includes software licensed from TrufSoft.com.
modules for French-English, Spanish-English, German-English, Italian-English , Portuguese-English, Norwegian-English, French-Spanish, French-Italian, French-German, Spanish-German, Spanish-Portuguese, Esperanto-English, Latin-English, and English and French monolingual dictionaries and thesauri.
As well as its own language data sets, third-party modules include an English-French medical dictionary licenced from Masson
, the French division of Elsevier
, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, an English-Klingon
dictionary developed in collaboration with the Klingon Language Institute
and Simon & Schuster
, and bilingual corpora developed in association with HarperCollins
. The co-branded Dictionaries from Collins
, Masson, and Simon & Schuster are for use exclusively with Ultralingua software.
The developer also has agreements with McGraw-Hill
and Hachette for publication and distribution of print and CD-ROM versions of its dictionaries.
Other programs separately available that are based on the Ultralingua technology include Grammatica, a spell and grammar check utility, and Distinguo
, an API for semantic search
.
Point-and-click
Point-and-click is the action of a computer user moving a cursor to a certain location on a screen and then pressing a mouse button, usually the left button , or other pointing device...
and drag-and-drop
Drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop is the action of selecting a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object...
multilingual translation dictionary, thesaurus, and language reference utility. The full suite of Ultralingua language tools is available free online without the need for download and installation.
As well as its online products, the developer offers premium downloadable language software with extended features and content for Macintosh
Macintosh
The Macintosh , or Mac, is a series of several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by Apple Inc. The first Macintosh was introduced by Apple's then-chairman Steve Jobs on January 24, 1984; it was the first commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a...
and Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
computer platforms, smartphone
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
s, and other hand held devices.
Features
In addition to the main user interface of the electronic dictionaryElectronic dictionary
An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including:*as dedicated handheld devices...
, a ‘hotkey’ feature allows the user to click on a word in any program that uses editable text including web browsers and PDF
Portable Document Format
Portable Document Format is an open standard for document exchange. This file format, created by Adobe Systems in 1993, is used for representing documents in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems....
documents, and source code
Source code
In computer science, source code is text written using the format and syntax of the programming language that it is being written in. Such a language is specially designed to facilitate the work of computer programmers, who specify the actions to be performed by a computer mostly by writing source...
. When a word is clicked, the translation or definition is displayed in a small pop-up window. The hotkey tool does not require previous launching of the software application.
The word stemming function allows searches from inflected forms of a word into the root word, such as in French, allez → aller), with further extension by lemmatisation
Lemmatisation
Lemmatisation in linguistics, is the process of grouping together the different inflected forms of a word so they can be analysed as a single item....
. Full verb conjugation in all tenses, and number conversion from digits to text in the available languages (e.g. "123" → "one hundred twenty-three"), are available through the program interface, as well as free access to online examples of language in use, and a discussion forum moderated by linguists and lexicographers.
The search algorithms are tolerant of capitalisation, minor misspelling, and omitted accents and diacritics
Diacritics
diacritics is a quarterly academic journal established in 1971 at Cornell University and published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Articles serve to review recent literature in the field of literary criticism, and have covered topics in gender studies, political theory, psychoanalysis, queer...
. Extensive lexical information is provided including irregular plurals, irregular verb forms, phrases and examples of use, American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
and British English
British English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
variations, and grammar references. IPA transcription is given, while several language modules are also enabled for text-to-speech.
The application interface can be either permanently displayed above or alongside any other open program windows, or allowed to ‘float’ above open windows and is resizable.
An integrated learning tool provides a full screen flashcard
Flashcard
A flashcard or flash card is a set of cards bearing information, as words or numbers, on either or both sides, used in classroom drills or in private study. One writes a question on a card and an answer overleaf. Flashcards can bear vocabulary, historical dates, formulas or any subject matter that...
feature that can work with the words in the language databases, and user-added definitions.
History
The concept of the Ultralingua dictionary software began in 1996 when a small group of professors from Carleton CollegeCarleton College
Carleton College is an independent non-sectarian, coeducational, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, USA. The college enrolls 1,958 undergraduate students, and employs 198 full-time faculty members. In 2012 U.S...
had the idea of creating a French dictionary that allowed the user to look up words on the fly with drag-and-drop
Drag-and-drop
In computer graphical user interfaces, drag-and-drop is the action of selecting a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object...
technology, to and from a work in progress.
The dictionary program was first developed for the Apple Macintosh only. It was launched as freeware
Freeware
Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
in 1997 under the name of Le Francophile and distributed mainly on the cover floppy discs of Mac magazines. It was commercialised in 1999 as shareware
Shareware
The term shareware is a proprietary software that is provided to users without payment on a trial basis and is often limited by any combination of functionality, availability, or convenience. Shareware is often offered as a download from an Internet website or as a compact disc included with a...
as a fully functional application that could be obtained online from download sites. By the year 2000, with the collaboration of additional specialists in lexicography and linguistics, the product range had expanded to include language modules for Spanish and German, and was released for Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
. A French-German module was added in 2002.
Focusing on the Apple iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
, in 2004 a low-memory, budget range of dictionaries including up to 80,000 indexed entries, along with idiomatic expressions, slang, and indications of usage was introduced under the brand name Accio. The versions for iPod
IPod
iPod is a line of portable media players created and marketed by Apple Inc. The product line-up currently consists of the hard drive-based iPod Classic, the touchscreen iPod Touch, the compact iPod Nano, and the ultra-compact iPod Shuffle...
include audio files of common phrases recorded from native speakers, and is available for the five major language pairs. Concurrent with the opening of the Apple App Store in 2008, the language tools were launched for the iPhone
IPhone
The iPhone is a line of Internet and multimedia-enabled smartphones marketed by Apple Inc. The first iPhone was unveiled by Steve Jobs, then CEO of Apple, on January 9, 2007, and released on June 29, 2007...
.
The major languages and features of the dictionary program have been offered free online since 2005 and take in to account all the improvements of regular releases.
By 2009 the software package was offering 17 dictionaries and additional language tools for widely spoken world languages.
Version 7.1.4 (Mac) and version 7.0.0.0 (Windows), released in the fall of 2008 and May 2009 respectively, incorporated a completely redesigned GUI
Gui
Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...
and addressed many of the suggestions for improvement made in an exhaustive independent evaluation of version 6.0 by the State University of Texas (CALICO
CALICO (consortium)
CALICO, full name The Computer Assisted Language Instruction Consortium, is a non-profit, self-governing, international organization devoted to the dissemination of information concerning language learning technology....
).
Though many people have been involved in the development of Ultralingua's code and data, the founders and main contributors to its development are the Chair Professors of Carleton's Linguistics and Computer Science departments. Elements of Ultralingua software have been developed in collaboration with Princeton University
Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, and The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, by Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States....
. Additional code libraries used include contributions by CTGradient, ShortcutRecorder (BSD License), PTHotKey, Sparkle for application updates, and the hotkey code includes software licensed from TrufSoft.com.
Available dictionaries
From its own in-house lexicographers the software provides proprietary bilingual dictionaryBilingual dictionary
A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be unidirectional, meaning that they list the meanings of words of one language in another, or can be bidirectional, allowing...
modules for French-English, Spanish-English, German-English, Italian-English , Portuguese-English, Norwegian-English, French-Spanish, French-Italian, French-German, Spanish-German, Spanish-Portuguese, Esperanto-English, Latin-English, and English and French monolingual dictionaries and thesauri.
As well as its own language data sets, third-party modules include an English-French medical dictionary licenced from Masson
Masson (publisher)
Masson was a French publisher specialised in medical and scientific collections. In 1987, Masson purchased Armand Colin. In turn, it became part of the City Group in 1994...
, the French division of Elsevier
Elsevier
Elsevier is a publishing company which publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere....
, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, an English-Klingon
Klingon
Klingons are a fictional warrior race in the Star Trek universe.Klingons are recurring villains in the 1960s television show Star Trek: The Original Series, and have appeared in all five spin-off series and eight feature films...
dictionary developed in collaboration with the Klingon Language Institute
Klingon Language Institute
The Klingon Language Institute is an independent organization located in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, USA. Its goal is to promote the Klingon language and culture.- General :About 2500 members in over 50 countries all over the world have joined the KLI...
and Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster
Simon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
, and bilingual corpora developed in association with HarperCollins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
. The co-branded Dictionaries from Collins
HarperCollins
HarperCollins is a publishing company owned by News Corporation. It is the combination of the publishers William Collins, Sons and Co Ltd, a British company, and Harper & Row, an American company, itself the result of an earlier merger of Harper & Brothers and Row, Peterson & Company. The worldwide...
, Masson, and Simon & Schuster are for use exclusively with Ultralingua software.
The developer also has agreements with McGraw-Hill
McGraw-Hill
The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., is a publicly traded corporation headquartered in Rockefeller Center in New York City. Its primary areas of business are financial, education, publishing, broadcasting, and business services...
and Hachette for publication and distribution of print and CD-ROM versions of its dictionaries.
Other programs separately available that are based on the Ultralingua technology include Grammatica, a spell and grammar check utility, and Distinguo
Distinguo
Distinguo is a proprietary software application for Semantic search based on description logic that enables users to search for meaning instead of just keywords. This API permits developers to integrate into their applications a tool to parse natural language , and then measure the semantic...
, an API for semantic search
Semantic search
Semantic search seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding searcher intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable dataspace, whether on the Web or within a closed system, to generate more relevant results. Author Seth Grimes lists "11 approaches that join...
.
Evaluation and Criticism (v 6.0)
It has been suggested in an independent evaluation by CALICO headquartered at the State University of Texas that the lexical content of the dictionaries tested with version 6.0 (2006) fell short on several issues: namely that the lack of systematic information on usage, regional variants, and examples in context diminished to a certain extent the value of these tools; and that entries needed to be organized into coherent and easily identifiable sections, with priority given to primary meanings between the language 1 and language 2. So, too, cultural and geographical entries included in the monolingual dictionaries needed to be expanded to cover all countries in which the language is spoken. The evaluation went on to state that despite their shortcomings, which decrease each time a new version is released, given the size of each of the dictionaries, the entries are reasonably comprehensible and offer useful information for language learners, particularly in the dictionaries with more complete databases.Platforms (current releases)
Mac OSX,10.3.+ ; Windows 2000, NT, XP, Vista, Windows 7; Windows Mobile; Palm OS; Pocket PC; Smartphone; iPhone; SymbianExternal links
- Dan Freaks, PC World, review 14 June 2008
- Ultralingua web site
- Ultralingua’s free Online Dictionary
- Alternative software (translation by click): Babylon Lingoes, Clicktionary, Lion, FreeTranslator
- Lingoes (a single click translation software)Lingoes (program)Lingoes is a single-click multi-lingual translation software program released as a freeware translation utility. Lingoes is often compared to Babylon dictionary due to similarities in the GUI, same functionalities and most importantly being free of charge.-Features and Expandability:Lingoes has the...
See also
- Centre for LexicographyCentre for LexicographyCentre for Lexicography is a research centre affiliated with the Aarhus School of Business, University of Aarhus Denmark, and was established in 1996. The Centre's aim is to carry out lexicographic research into needs-adapted information and data access, i.e...
- Corpus linguisticsCorpus linguisticsCorpus linguistics is the study of language as expressed in samples or "real world" text. This method represents a digestive approach to deriving a set of abstract rules by which a natural language is governed or else relates to another language. Originally done by hand, corpora are now largely...
- DICTDICTDICT is a dictionary network protocol created by the DICT Development Group. It is described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol and to allow clients to access more dictionaries during use...
, the dictionary server protocol - Encyclopedic dictionaryEncyclopedic dictionaryAn encyclopedic dictionary typically includes a large number of short listings, arranged alphabetically, and discussing a wide range of topics. Encyclopedic dictionaries can be general, containing articles on topics in many different fields; or they can specialize in a particular field...
- Machine translationMachine translationMachine translation, sometimes referred to by the abbreviation MT is a sub-field of computational linguistics that investigates the use of computer software to translate text or speech from one natural language to another.On a basic...
- LexicographyLexicographyLexicography is divided into two related disciplines:*Practical lexicography is the art or craft of compiling, writing and editing dictionaries....
- LexigrafLexigrafLexigraf is a multilingual lexicographical project developed at the Aristotle University Thessaloniki Greece between 1997 and 2004.Current lexicographical projects require sophisticated IT infrastructure to be completed - both in hardware capacity and software...
- Medical dictionaryMedical dictionaryA medical dictionary is a lexicon for words used in medicine. The three major English language medical dictionaries are Stedman's, Taber's, and Dorland's Pocket Medical Dictionary. Other significant medical dictionaries are distributed by Elsevier, the world's largest publisher of medical and...
- Monolingual learners' dictionaries
- Comparison of machine translation applicationsComparison of machine translation applicationsA machine translation application is a program which can translate text or speech from one natural language to another. Machine translation applications are essential to the modern language industry...