Other languages available are not for English translations, unfortunately. Since LingoPad is a totally free product, there are really no complaints except for its perhaps more limited capabilities in languages other than German and English. LingoPad offers an attractive user-interface with a standard left-panel with word lists and the right-panel providing a dictionary with translations and a useful thesaurus. Unlike other dictionaries, LingoPad may be used in an airplane or on the go since it doesn't rely on a connection to online services like Google Translate. Not only that, but you may also access other, less comprehensive dictionaries from the web site including French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Turkish, Norwegian and Arabic.
When you struggle with translating a certain word in context, Linguee will show you how other people before you have solved it.LingoPad is a small, but very useful offline dictionary which comes pre-installed with support for German-English and English-German dictionaries. For example, if a web-site has multiple language versions, Linguee will show you two sentences that include your query side by side. You can also use it lookup simple words but its real strength lies in searching through a vast database of translations. Last but not least, I’d like to mention linguee which is a bit different because strictly speaking it’s not a dictionary but a search-engine for translations. Vocabulary Trainer (also available as app)
actual real-world examples how the word or phrase is used on websites. One feature that I really like is that it shows “Usage Examples”, i.e. Just like their paper publications, the Pons online dictionary features a very clean layout and solid translations. This online German-English dictionary is provided by Pons, a renowned German publisher of dictionaries that was established in 1978. On top of this very solid and beautifully designed dictionary, bab.la offers many other helpful features such as a conjugation browser, quizzes, grammar overview and games. Search results are very easy to navigate and always come with synonyms, examples and context. Recently, Leo also started providing for-pay (free-trial available) language learning courses, which may be helpful for beginners.įirst of all, bab.la has a really clean and neat design, and in terms of presentation is probably one of my favorites. Another nice feature is that it shows you orthographically similar words on results pages. Leo has a very active community and the forum is always worth a visit when you’re stuck finding a translation. In my experience, Leo may not always display as many results as but one cool feature is that the results include forum entries that discuss the queried word which sometimes helps to clear up certain nuances. In terms of features and quality this one is very similar to, so it may just be a matter of preference – some of my German teaching colleagues swear by Leo, some by. Since every user can contribute, correct and verify translations is something like the Wikipedia of German-English dictionaries: open, fast and community-driven. It doesn’t have tons of bells and whistles, the design may be somewhat outdated, but its real strength is in the results, which include many idiomatic phrases and terminology from a variety of fields. This is by far one of my favorite German-English dictionaries online. But since there are still key differences in terms of layout, results and other features, I’d like to share a quick overview of my favorite German-English dictionaries in this post. Most online dictionaries today are high quality and will translate most words and even phrases without a hitch.
Whenever people ask me which online German-English dictionary is the best, whether to use an app, a browser extension, an offline lookup tool or just go full retro and lug around a paper dictionary, I always answer: “Whatever works for you is best.”