WR volunteer dictionaries

[mkellogg]

Hi everybody,

I want to expand the dictionaries available on WordReference. My dream is to have many more dictionaries available, especially for non-English pairs such as Spanish-Greek and Italian-Turkish. We currently have virtual dictionaries for those pairs and it wouldn't take too much work to make real dictionaries.

What do we need?

• Enthusiastic people who have the same dream. You don't need to be an expert. Anybody with a good understanding of the two languages can get us started. Improving translations better over time will not be difficult on WordReference. Really, it is true, you can do it with our guidance.
• A small team of maybe 4-5 people who can work together towards the goal, hopefully joined by more people later.

We are best prepared for Spanish, French, Italian and English to other languages but there are many possibilities.

With a small team just doing a little work each week:

• After 6 months, we should have a small, but useful dictionary.
• After 1 year, it should be pretty good.
• After 2 years, it should be very good, if not the best in the world for your language pair! Hopefully, with a nice community in the forums.

Sign-up form <<<---- show your interest here!
Progress page for current volunteer dictionaries

Please contact me if you are interested or have any questions. I look forward to what we can accomplish working together.

Mike

 

[Bevj]

Would a Spanish-Catalan dictionary be at all feasible?

 

[mkellogg]

Would a Spanish-Catalan dictionary be at all feasible?

Oh, yes, I was thinking about Catalan. First of all, English-Catalan would be a great one to start with. Spanish-Catalan? I think so. Look at the Spanish-English and Spanish-French dictionaries. Does it make sense to use that same "Spanish base" (the Spanish side) for Spanish-Catalan? The "base" was designed mainly for "to English" but should still work quite well for Catalan. We used it for French without any problems.

I would be thrilled to get both or either of those started.

 

[Bevj]

I don't see why it can't be used.
I expect to have more free time than I would wish this summer due to the decimation of the Spanish tourist industry, and I would be delighted to help.

 

[MrMuselk]

I noticed there aren’t any Danish-English and Norwegian-English dictionaries, but there are Danish and Norwegian “sub forums” (not exactly sub forums, but close enough, seeing it’s a Nordic languages sub forum) Maybe it would be a good idea to make more Nordic dictionaries, seeing the whole area is pretty bare?

 

[Nanon]

Hi Mike,

What about Russian and Arabic?...

 

[mkellogg]

What about Russian and Arabic?

We have a licensed English-Russian dictionary and our English-Arabic dictionary does well. (Personally, I would love to start doing Arabic dialects.) Nanon, if you can put together a team for French-Russian, we could start that. A real English-Russian dictionary of our own would be nice to create, too, if there are people interested.

there aren’t any Danish-English and Norwegian-English dictionaries

So, having these dictionaries will be nice, but we need volunteers to create them. I can provide the infrastructure, forums and training, but we need people who are interested in making it happen to get them created. If we get enough Danes or Norwegians to step forward, we can create them.