Préambule en français : Vous traduisez à partir d’une langue étrangère vers le français ou vice-versa ? Heureusement pour vous, Linguee est à votre disposition ! Puisque les nouvelles combinaisons linguistiques sont actuellement à l’essai, il faut créer un compte afin de rechercher des termes ou expressions dans les bases de données.

Preámbulo en español: Si traducen desde una lengua extranjera hasta el español o viceversa, Linguee ya está a disposición de ustedes. Como las nuevas combinaciones lingüísticas se ponen a prueba en este momento, les falta establecer una cuenta para buscar términos o expresiones en la base de datos.

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If you translate into or from a language besides English, you’re in for a treat: Linguee, a unique translation tool that stores several texts of equivalent words and expressions, has more language combinations.

When I started to use this tool, it had only four combinations into or from English: English ↔ German, English ↔ Spanish, English ↔ French, and English ↔ Portuguese. While this is good news for English translators, other translators have had to make do with search engines similar to Linguee. These include Reverso, InterActive Terminology for Europe (IATE), and WeBiText, to name but a few.

Recently, however, Linguee has added new language combinations. To access them, click on the “More languages” tab at the bottom of the page. If you wish to query terms or expressions in French, German, Brazilian Portuguese, or Spanish, just click on the appropriate language tab; you will be directed to the homepage in the language of your choice. Depending on your choice, you now have the opportunity to obtain translation results into or from the aforementioned languages.

Here is what a result screen looks like when using Linguee. This example shows two results with Spanish as the source language and French as the target language.

Like every opportunity, there lies at least one catch: to query a term or expression from or into one of the foreign languages, you must create an account, for these combinations are currently treated as a trial run. Once you have created the account, you will be asked to access your inbox, select the e-mail from Linguee, and click on the hyperlink to activate your account. Voilà! You’ll be able to search for any term or expression in all the trial language pairs. By the way, Linguee will soon be available in Chinese, Japanese, and other languages in the not-too-distant future.

Although I take up only a marginal amount of projects into French and Spanish upon request, I am delighted to know that Linguee has finally decided to expand its language database. My foreign-language translators ought to be happy, too.

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P.S. to previous post: Two weeks after I published my article about the Charbonneau Commission, Les Perreaux, national correspondent for The Globe and Mail‘s Montreal office, gave me his take on the use of two English equivalents: “I believe Charbonneau is known formally as a ‘commission of inquiry,’ so we tend to use either noun as shorthand.” Mr. Perreaux is in line with the findings two Twitter followers and I revealed.

P.P.S. In case you’re wondering, Linguee’s English website address is http://www.linguee.com 🙂