Solarwhizz

Try this to read anything in Spanish on a webpage, I found it to be oustanding,
once set up it translates the pages automatically,

http://translate.google.com/#

agoreira

I've used it before, and it seems to do a reasonable job, certainly better than a lot of them. But like all machine translations, it has it's limitations. Better to learn the lingo and do your own translations!
Tried to fool it with "tiene madera de pintor" and it came back with "has the makings of a painter", so well done!

Mitzyboy

Babelfish said "it has painter wood"

steviedeluxe

I've found that Google is far better recently, and it's obvious they're constantly improving the algorithms. Even so mistakes are often made, and the English can come across as being jilted. Still far better to use human translation (as mentioned above by Agoreira). Speaking of which I'm currently developing my own web site project that will be of help in the English-Spanish field. Watch this space, I hope to have a prototype up and running by the New Year.

DENISE WALTERS

Well done look forwad to seeing it Stevie. I do occassionally use Google I find it reasonably good but has occassionally failed to give the correct interpretation

sjrw

They are all getting better now.
I use a combination of Google and Reverso, with elmundo.es sometimes. Then add a bit of my own knowledge of grammar and a check up on occasional words it comes out quite accurate.

Econ

To be honest Google has it's problems when doing English to Spanish translations (Never really used it in reverse) but if you understand a reasonable amount of Spanish it can be useful for setting the base. Maybe with doing my own translations I am just lazy but I generally enter the English then take the Google translation to Spanish and do alterations/correction to that, e.g. replace words that Google has got wrong, replace south American Spanish words with Castelaño words and restructure some of the sentences... but it is a good place to start if you want to save some time... even if you understand a reasonable amount of Spanish.

agoreira

¿Castelaño? You just made that word up! ¿castellano?

Econ

No not made up, just spelt it wrong... and I can't even blame it on Google

steviedeluxe

Thx Denise. I've got a prototype up and running, but I'm afraid it won't be much help until I've built up the vocabulary. I'm going to monitor what words are entered, and update weekly.
For now you can seach on (for example) corner, dark, deep, world, compromise, blood and get various English examples with a translation into Spanish. Got quite a few words beginning 'a***' and 'f*****' but still loads of work to do- probably a 18 month job!
http://www.lenguahelp.co.uk/

Of course a Spanish to English version would be awesome, but I'm only going to do that when I can persuade a native speaking Spaniard to help me.

I'm not allowed by forum rules to ask for feedback, so please don't post any (I don't know if that includes PMs though)

agoreira

Not feedback, and not wanting to knock it, I applaud any efforts to promote the Spanish language, but what do you think your site will provide that the other don't? Given that there are loads of online dictionaries that already do a great job, what will make yours stand out from the others? Just intrigued?

steviedeluxe

Good question. It shows examples of different uses of words, including idiomatic uses, and where possible I include links of the use. For instance one of the entries for 'fish' will show the proverb "better to be a big fish in a small pond.." with the Spanish equivalent. I've shown it to a couple of learners of English, and they think it's very useful (or will be, when I build up the database). Whether or not I continue to have the time to build this up remains to be seen...

Of course, like all good ideas I've copied this from another site Linguee.de for German/English . Their site is a lot more comprehensive and includes MP3 tracks; I imagine they had a team of 10 or 15 who developed it. They've ended up with a website that gets 720,000 visitors each month. I'll be very happy with 1% of their success!

Edit: It's also something of a challenge. Although I work (or did work) in IT, my web creation skills aren't that great, so this is an attempt to see what I can do (plenty of work still planned for the site). There's a saying that "The first step is the hardest" or "Nothing's easy to start with" - In Spanish this is "El primer paso es el que cuesta". If nothing else my own vocabulary will be improved by this site!

HappyGoLucky

Well the SpanishDict site not only has a translation service (based on Google's I think)... but it has loads of learning aids and a dictionary with speaking sound-bites, grammar, examples, flashcards...

If you create yourself an account it will log and reward your progress and exercises.

I find it a great tool to use along with books and to help with my Spanish home work.

>>> http://www.spanishdict.com/

steviedeluxe

I agree. As dictionary sites go, that has to be one of the best.
I also think the ElPais dictionary is very good. Its one drawback is perhaps the slow response.
http://www.elpais.com/diccionarios/i...espanol/absent
I prefer both of those sites to the WordReference pages, which although good, still seem confusing at times to me.

agoreira

I quite like wordreference, especially if you have an unusual word or phrase, if you search in their forum, it's invariably there. And if not, ask the question there, the forum is so busy that invariably your question will be answered very quickly. Plus the answers are bang up to date, all too often a word in a dictionary is very often out of date, or out of fashion, and you have no way of knowing that. I recently came across this in a Spanish forum, "Yo pediré a alguien que pilote inglés" Now the meaning is obvious, but I had never come across the verb pilotar used in this sense, and I doubt many dictionaries will show it used this way either. But ask in wordreference and they will tell you. Asking a Spanish skype pal, he said it was only the second time he had heard it used this way, it tends to be used by youngsters! I find Spanish forums are a great source of all the latest slang, in words etc. The only problem is remembering them!
These are the main one´s I have on my toolbar.
http://www.wordmagicsoft.com/dictionary/tools/index.php
http://dictionary.reverso.net/spanish-english/
http://es.thefreedictionary.com/
http://www.proz.com/forum/spanish-24.html Serious stuff!