Poll: Do you use online dictionaries you have to pay for?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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Jan 10, 2019

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you use online dictionaries you have to pay for?".

This poll was originally submitted by Rita Utt. View the poll results »



 
Muriel Vasconcellos
Muriel Vasconcellos  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 03:15
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
Other Jan 10, 2019

I said "no" but then I remembered that I paid for electronic versions of Merriam-Webster and Spanish Real Academia. Not online, but also not hardcopy.

[Edited at 2019-01-10 08:39 GMT]


 
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 10:15
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
No Jan 10, 2019

All my subscriptions are free...

Mario Freitas
 
Rita Utt
Rita Utt  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 11:15
English to German
+ ...
Yes Jan 10, 2019

I subscribe to two law dictionaries (german, french) and a general dictionary. Very useful, as I would have to buy online versions of these otherwise and by subscribing they are all shown on the same site. It saves me a lot of time and costs me about 10 euros a month.

 
Christine Andersen
Christine Andersen  Identity Verified
Denmark
Local time: 11:15
Member (2003)
Danish to English
+ ...
Yes, I couldn't do without them Jan 10, 2019

Danish, my source language, is not widely spoken as languages go, so the demand for hard-copy specialist dictionaries is also very small compared with the overheads of producing them. However, there are some excellent lexicographers who work with Danish-English and Danish-German, and their work is available online. I have had the privilege of meeting and being taught by some of them.

Lexicographers have to live, even if they are supported by universities and others, and the speciali
... See more
Danish, my source language, is not widely spoken as languages go, so the demand for hard-copy specialist dictionaries is also very small compared with the overheads of producing them. However, there are some excellent lexicographers who work with Danish-English and Danish-German, and their work is available online. I have had the privilege of meeting and being taught by some of them.

Lexicographers have to live, even if they are supported by universities and others, and the specialist dictionaries are not all freely available. But those dictionaries would be the last thing I stopped paying for - you can't run a business without proper tools! I do also use the free monolingual dictionaries in all my languages, and am very grateful for them.

The situation varies a lot from one language pair to another. I believe at least one of the Danish lexicographers was collaborating with colleagues across the EU at one time, adapting the English half of the dictionary and the definitions. In other cases there simply are no dictionaries available, and translation has to go through English or another intermediate language.

I am lucky there, once again - if it exists at all, there is probably an English version of some kind!
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Yetta Jensen Bogarde
Kitty Brussaard
Julio Madrid
 
Thayenga
Thayenga  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:15
Member (2009)
English to German
+ ...
No Jan 10, 2019

The ones I use are all free. There are many to choose from in my language pairs, so one business expense less.

 
Nadja Balogh
Nadja Balogh  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 11:15
Member (2007)
Japanese to German
+ ...
Other Jan 10, 2019

There's a free online dictionary I use frequently, but once a year I send them a donation because I feel they deserve it.

 
Mario Freitas
Mario Freitas  Identity Verified
Brazil
Local time: 07:15
Member (2014)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Only free Jan 10, 2019

There are plenty of free resources in the internet, more than enough to find practically anything you may need. Mostly, these sources are not actually dictionaries. Dictionaries may be very useful, but should not be the first resource used by a translator. We need localized translation, not literal. We must search for the terms within the desired jargon, which a dictionary hardly ever provides.
I have actually cancelled my signature in two dictionary/glossary sites that used to be free of
... See more
There are plenty of free resources in the internet, more than enough to find practically anything you may need. Mostly, these sources are not actually dictionaries. Dictionaries may be very useful, but should not be the first resource used by a translator. We need localized translation, not literal. We must search for the terms within the desired jargon, which a dictionary hardly ever provides.
I have actually cancelled my signature in two dictionary/glossary sites that used to be free of charge and decided to start charging in 2018. One of them was the AVROdx glossary, which is very good, but decided to charge more than I pay for five licenses of the Office 365 per year. So, goodbye!
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Julio Madrid
Joe Ly Sien
 


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Poll: Do you use online dictionaries you have to pay for?






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