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Monday, May 28

A Peek at My Spanish Toolbar

My Spanish Toolbar

You probably like clutter about as much as I do, so not many things make it onto my browser. However, a few sites have earned a spot on my Learning Spanish Toolbar. You might like to test drive them too.


Babelfish

The first site that made its way to my toolbar was Babelfish. This is a translation program and does a reasonably good job of helping you to get the gist of whatever text you cut and paste into the text box. The grammar in the results is not great and the program translates within a medium to narrow band of vocabulary, so don't expect laser-like accuracy. At times it shows the original and translated word as one and the same. When this happens you have to dig a little deeper.


WordReference.com

To do the deeper digging, I use a site called WordReference.com. It describes itself as an Online French, Italian and Spanish Dictionary, though it will also translate Portuguese into Spanish.
It also functions as a regular definitions dictionary for both Spanish and English. You might also be interested in the Spanish synonym feature. I highly recommend this resource and am rarely disappointed in the results I get from it. Not only can it handle verb conjugations, It will give you a number idiomatic expressions based on your entry. You'll probably spend a bit of time just playing with this tool. Did I mention that I like it?


Wikipedia in Spanish

A third resource on my toolbar is Wikipedia in Spanish. Wikipedia is not known for its complete accuracy nor its depth, but even knowing this I like it anyway. It provides a quick overview of the vocabulary of a topic and allows me to better follow an audio, video or live discussion of the subject.

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