Ultralingua is a single-click and

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

multilingual

translation dictionary A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one la ...

, thesaurus, and language reference utility. The full suite of Ultralingua language tools is available free online without the need for download and installation. As well as its online products, the developer offers premium downloadable language software with extended features and content for

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and ...

and

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

computer platforms,

smartphone A smartphone is a portable computer device that combines mobile telephone and computing functions into one unit. They are distinguished from feature phones by their stronger hardware capabilities and extensive mobile operating systems, whic ...

s, and other hand held devices.

Features

In addition to the main user interface of the

electronic dictionary An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including software installed on tablet or desktop computers ...

, a ‘

hotkey computing, a keyboard shortcut also known as hotkey is a series of one or several keys to quickly invoke a software program or perform a preprogrammed action. This action may be part of the standard functionality of the operating system or ...

’ feature allows the user to click on a word in any program that uses editable text including web browsers and

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

documents, and

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

. When a word is clicked, the translation or definition is displayed in a small pop-up window. The hotkey tool does not require previous launching of the software application. The word stemming function allows searches from

inflected In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...

forms of a word into the root word, such as in French, (''allez'' → ''aller'') with further extension by

lemmatisation Lemmatisation ( or lemmatization) in linguistics is the process of grouping together the inflected forms of a word so they can be analysed as a single item, identified by the word's lemma, or dictionary form. In computational linguistics, lemma ...

. Full verb conjugation in all tenses, and number conversion from digits to text in the available languages (e.g. "123" → "one hundred twenty-three"), are available through the program interface, as well as free access to online examples of language in use, and a

discussion forum An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least temporar ...

moderated by linguists and lexicographers. The search algorithms are tolerant of capitalisation, minor misspelling, and omitted accents and

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...

. Extensive lexical information is provided including irregular plurals, irregular verb forms, phrases and examples of use,

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...

and

British English British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...

variations, and grammar references.

IPA IPA commonly refers to: * India pale ale, a style of beer * International Phonetic Alphabet, a system of phonetic notation * Isopropyl alcohol, a chemical compound IPA may also refer to: Organizations International * Insolvency Practitioners ...

transcription is given, while several language modules are also enabled for text-to-speech. The application interface can be either permanently displayed above or alongside any other open program windows, or allowed to ‘float’ above open windows and is resizable. An integrated learning tool provides a full screen

flashcard A flashcard or flash card (also known as an index card) is a card bearing information on both sides, which is intended to be used as an aid in memorization. Each flashcard bears a question on one side and an answer on the other. Flashcards are ...

feature that can work with the words in the language databases, and user-added definitions.

History

The concept of the Ultralingua dictionary software began in 1996 when a small group of professors from

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota. Founded in 1866, it had 2,105 undergraduate students and 269 faculty members in fall 2016. The 200-acre main campus is between Northfield and the 800-acre Cowling ...

had the idea of creating a French dictionary that allowed the user to look up words on the fly with

technology, to and from a work in progress. The dictionary program was first developed for the

Apple Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

only. It was launched as

freeware Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the f ...

in 1997 under the name of ''Le Francophile'' and distributed mainly on the cover floppy discs of Mac magazines. It was commercialised in 1999 as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer ...

as a fully functional application that could be obtained online from download sites. By the year 2000, with the collaboration of additional specialists in lexicography and linguistics, the product range had expanded to include language modules for Spanish and German, and was released for

. A French-German module was added in 2002. Concurrent with the opening of the Apple

App Store An App Store (or app marketplace) is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not include the running of the co ...

in 2008, the language tools were launched for the iPhone. The major languages and features of the dictionary program have been offered free online since 2005 and take into account all the improvements of regular releases. By 2009 the software package was offering 17 dictionaries and additional language tools for widely spoken world languages. Version 7.1.4 (Mac) and version 7.0.0.0 (Windows), released in the fall of 2008 and May 2009 respectively, incorporated a completely redesigned

GUI The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

and addressed many of the suggestions for improvement made in an exhaustive independent evaluation of version 6.0 by the

State University of Texas The University of Texas System (UT System) is an American government entity of the state of Texas that includes 13 higher educational institutions throughout the state including eight universities and five independent health institutions. The UT& ...

(

CALICO Calico (; in British usage since 1505) is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than ...

). Though many people have been involved in the development of Ultralingua's code and data, the founders and main contributors to its development are the Chair Professors of Carleton's Linguistics and Computer Science departments. Elements of Ultralingua software have been developed in collaboration with

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

, and The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, by

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One of its predecessors was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools; it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology ...

. Additional code libraries used include contributions by CTGradient, ShortcutRecorder (BSD License), PTHotKey, Sparkle for application updates, and the hotkey code includes software licensed from TrufSoft.com.

Available dictionaries

From its own in-house lexicographers the software provides proprietary

bilingual dictionary A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to translate words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list the meanings of words of one lan ...

modules for French-English, Spanish-English, German-English, Italian-English, Portuguese-English, Norwegian-English, French-Spanish, French-Italian, French-German, Spanish-German, Spanish-Portuguese, Esperanto-English, Latin-English, and English and French monolingual dictionaries and thesauri. As well as its own language data sets, third-party modules include an English-French medical dictionary licensed from Masson, the French division of

Elsevier Elsevier () is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, '' Trends'', th ...

, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, an English-

Klingon The Klingons ( ; Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a fictional species in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the original ''Star Trek'' (''TOS'') series, Klingons were swarthy humanoids c ...

dictionary developed in collaboration with the

Klingon Language Institute The Klingon Language Institute (KLI) is an independent organization originally founded in Flourtown, Pennsylvania and now located in Kentucky. Its goal is to promote the Klingon language and culture. General The KLI has members from all over t ...

and

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster () is an American publishing company and a subsidiary of Paramount Global. It was founded in New York City on January 2, 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. As of 2016, Simon & Schuster was the third largest publ ...

, and bilingual corpora developed in association with

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Cor ...

. The

co-branded Co-branding is a marketing strategy that involves strategic alliance of multiple brand names jointly used on a single product or service. Co-branding is an arrangement that associates a single product or service with more than one brand name, o ...

Dictionaries from

Collins Collins may refer to: People Surname Given name * Collins O. Bright (1917–?), Sierra Leonean diplomat * Collins Chabane (1960–2015), South African Minister of Public Service and Administration * Collins Cheboi (born 1987), Kenyan middle- ...

, Masson, and Simon & Schuster are for use exclusively with Ultralingua software. The developer also has agreements with

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American educational publishing company and one of the "big three" educational publishers that publishes educational content, software, and services for pre-K through postgraduate education. The company also publishes referenc ...

and

Hachette Hachette may refer to: * Hachette (surname) * Hachette (publisher), a French publisher, the imprint of Lagardère Publishing ** Hachette Book Group, the American subsidiary ** Hachette Distribution Services, the distribution arm See also * Hachett ...

for publication and distribution of print and CD-ROM versions of its dictionaries. Other programs separately available that are based on the Ultralingua technology include Grammatica, a spell and grammar check utility, and Distinguo, an

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

for

semantic search Semantic search denotes search with meaning, as distinguished from lexical search where the search engine looks for literal matches of the query words or variants of them, without understanding the overall meaning of the query. Semantic search seek ...

Evaluation and Criticism (v 6.0)

It has been suggested in an independent evaluation by CALICOhttps://www.calico.org/p-383-Ultralingua%20(012008).html CALICO (4,500 words) headquartered at the

that the lexical content of the dictionaries tested with version 6.0 (2006) fell short on several issues: namely that the lack of systematic information on usage, regional variants, and examples in context diminished to a certain extent the value of these tools; and that entries needed to be organized into coherent and easily identifiable sections, with priority given to primary meanings between the language 1 and language 2. So, too, cultural and geographical entries included in the monolingual dictionaries needed to be expanded to cover all countries in which the language is spoken. The evaluation went on to state that despite their shortcomings, which decrease each time a new version is released, given the size of each of the dictionaries, the entries are reasonably comprehensible and offer useful information for language learners, particularly in the dictionaries with more complete databases.

Platforms (current releases)

Mac OS X,10.3.+ ; Windows 2000, NT, XP, Vista, Windows 7; Windows Mobile; Palm OS; Pocket PC; Smartphone; iPhone; Symbian

References

{{reflist

External links

Ultralingua web site
Dictionary software Classic Mac OS software MacOS text-related software Windows text-related software Online dictionaries Reference material lists