dictionaries

Do you happen to know what the difference is between "recto" and "verso"? How is a "folio" different to a "page"? What exactly is a "codex" and how does it relate to a printed book?

Yes, you guessed it - I'm on about manuscripts this time. Here are a few links to glossaries on the Web and in print that I've found useful in my own editing and translation work about codicology:

• A short glossary by the University of Nottingham: glossary on medieval books
• Glossary of English terms concerned with medieval art and architecture (listed in sections from A to Z).
• Harvard's METRO glossary (on Middle English texts such as Chaucer's works).
• The Hill Museum and Manuscript Library in Collegeville, MN has an online lexicon of terms used in manuscript studies.
• Another useful list of English terms is on Folgerpedia.
   
• Heidelberg University's website contains an illustrated section on the medieval manuscripts found in the Bibliotheca Palatina, which goes back to the 14th century. This medieval library is known as "the mother of all libraries" apparently. There's also a detailed glossary of German terms used to describe medieval manuscripts.
   
• Glossary of Lao manuscript terms (in English and Lao). These explanations relate to the Digital Library of Lao Manuscripts ("DLLM"), which is a project to save the contents of manuscripts from Laos by digitising the material. Over 12,000 manuscripts have been saved this way to date, making them easily accessible to researchers.

I'll be adding more links as time goes on. Please let me know of any helpful ones you are familiar with so I can take a look at them and possibly share them here.

One printed work in German that is related and deserves a mention here is "Buchmalerei. Terminologie in der Kunstgeschichte" by Christine Jakobi-Mirwald, particularly Chap. 12, which is a 27-page mini-dictionary of German terms in English, French and Italian.

Another notable dictionary that is in English is Peter Beal's "A Dictionary of English Manuscript Terminology, 1450-2000", published by OUP. This printed work is pricey, but there's a Kindle version of it (an e-book) that's good value and handy when working on a computer or tablet. Beal's dictionary is a comprehensive one with clear definitions for all the entries.

Hope you find these pointers helpful. (Please bear in mind that web pages often get changed over time, so the links to these resources may not always work. They did when I last updated this page in October 2026.)

Regards

Carl

Note: the image above shows a page of a 15th-century manuscript depicting Vincent of Beauvais, the author, working on it.
(Wikipedia Commons, public domain)

Despite us being well into the computer era, dictionaries are still an essential language resource for any translator. The dictionary-making industry has had to move with the times, which has rocked the boat quite a bit at established publishers such as Langenscheidt, but even so, it has managed to come up with electronic alternatives to paper dictionaries – and equally importantly, various ways of paying for them. Electronic dictionaries are now available as apps for mobile phones and portable e-readers like the Kindle, as PC software and as Web-based applications, for example. This post is about the latter, which are offered as paid services to which users subscribe (software as a service, or "SaaS").

One of the online dictionary services I use is MOT dictionaries and is run by a Finnish company called Kielikone. This firm provides various linguistic services via the Web that cater to people with an interest in translation and proof-reading, including Web-based dictionaries (e.g. via MOT mobile), machine translation (MOT translation) and online proof-reading (MOT proofing):

In addition to these three groups, Kielikone also offers its customers a small number of language guides, e.g. on English and Swedish grammar and on writing and spelling Finnish correctly, which caters to needs in their local market in Scandinavia.

Rather misleadingly, MOT translation is actually concerned with machine translation – from one of nine European languages and (Mandarin) Chinese into English and vice versa. Kielikone realistically admits that its MT system is only capable of making a "quick" translation of a text and is best suited to translating technical texts, instructions and news, i.e. material in which the focus is on content rather than style. In other words, post-editing is necessary to polish up the engine's translations (another task we human translators get lumbered with).

Rather than relying on MT's statistical algorithms, however, I prefer to use several of Kielikone's online dictionaries to help me translate my work. A wide range of monolingual and bilingual works are available, each of which costs a relatively small amount of money to subscribe to (around 15 euros for three months or roughly 49 euros for 12, for example). I've signed up for three German-English dictionaries, viz. MOT Collins German Dictionary, MOT Langenscheidt Muret-Sanders Großwörterbuch Englisch and MOT Oxford German Dictionary, and have an annual subscription, which is rather better value than a quarterly one. These electronic dictionaries are all based on well-known printed versions and have been licensed to Kielikone. (Installable versions for Windows PC users are also available, incidentally.)

To use the dictionaries you have chosen, you just log on to the MOT server via your Web browser using the user data that go with your subscription. It's very fast (and the connections I've set up have always been totally reliable). Set the language for the browser interface when you first start using MOT – it can be in English, German, Swedish or Finnish at the moment – and then pick the dictionary you want to use from a drop-down list:

If you set the system to search all of your dictionaries at once (by picking "Multiple dictionary selection" and clicking on the round plus symbol and selecting the works to be used), then when you enter a search term on the right, the results of your search will be displayed in a vertical list of all the dictionary entries that were found. The hits actually look much like those in a paper dictionary, with the entry being on the left and translations of it on the right together with sample sentences showing how the words are used (i.e. with contextual information):

Different kinds of searches are possible, depending on which option you select:

Like CD-ROM dictionaries, searches for terms can be done very quickly online, but I'd say the real advantage of subscribing to a number of MOT dictionaries is that you can see which dictionaries come up with hits instantaneously and the hits all appear on your monitor at once; there's no need to make individual searches in each dictionary as a universal search is done. So a system of this kind can save you time. Plus the fact that no maintenance is needed at the user's end, no system updates are called for and there's no need for any troubleshooting if anything goes wrong – this is all taken care of by the company providing the dictionaries over the Net.

So there's no hassle at all. What's more, you can try out additional dictionaries whenever you like, with no obligation to take out a subscription for them. If you find them useful, you pay for them and they get included in your personal software "suite" for immediate use. And if you decide you want to stop using your suite for any reason, you can simply cancel your subscription.

I thoroughly recommend "MOT dictionaries" as a translation resource as it's convenient to use, flexible and very helpful in many cases. Apart from including general dictionaries, the range also covers several commercial, technical and specialist dictionaries and encyclopaedias. Here's a sample:

If you'd like to try out the MOT dictionaries, get in touch with the Sales team at Kielikone and ask for a free trial.

Regards,

Carl

Further reading

- More on Langenscheidt's restructuring programme (in German)

images: screen shots from Kielikone's website; logo and other website images by courtesy of Kielikone Oy

As you may have gathered by now, I use a translation tool called memoQ to help me with most of my translation work. MemoQ comes with an interesting dictionary plug-in linking it to a huge external terminology database called the EuroTermBank, and if it is activated (which it is by default in version 6.0 and 6.2), then memoQ constantly looks up expressions that appear in my source texts in the database and "suggests" any English translations of them to me that it finds there.

The terms that are "recognised", i.e. correspond to the source words in appearance, are displayed in a window to the right of the translation area in memoQ so you can see them easily while you translate and decide whether or not to pick them (sometimes they match the context, sometimes they don't). You can insert them manually or by using a combination of keys on your keyboard. The ETB entries have a special symbol next to them in the results list, as you can see from this screen shot showing a German source text and matching term-base results (the empty space in the middle is for the translation that is about to be done):

Fig. 1: The translations found in the ETB term base are conveniently shown to the right of the translation grid. Those from my own term bases are directly above them.

Now, you won't find everything in the ETB term base, of course, but you will find a lot of material in a large number of European languages (currently 33, in fact), including those used in Eastern Europe and the Baltic States (Lithuania and Latvia, for example). That's because the ETB is actually a terminology project involving a large number of countries from the European Union.

The EuroTermBank was set up by a consortium of organisations specifically with Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in mind, but other new EU member states and interested countries and organizations outside the EU are invited to get involved in the project as well. The idea, they say, is to "exchange terminology data with existing national and EU terminology databases by establishing cooperative relationships, aligning methodologies and standards, [and] designing and implementing data-exchange mechanisms and procedures".

According to the ETB website, www.eurotermbank.com, the project focuses on harmonisation and consolidation of terminology work in new EU member states, "transferring experience from other European Union terminology networks and accumulating competencies and efforts of the accessed countries". The aim of the project is to provide a source of "consistent, harmonised and easily accessible terminology" in the European Union, a "centralized online terminology bank for languages of new EU member countries interlinked to other terminology banks and resources".

The terminology the ETB draws upon is taken from public-sector terminology resources, so it's obviously of particular value if you translate texts concerned with any of these (widely varying) areas. Business, finance and institutions are covered, for example.

There's a quick summary of what the database covers on the left (as of 14 Nov. 2013). As you can see, the EuroTermBank is a big, ongoing multilingual project. What I find particularly useful about it is the fact that source terms are not just listed in the target language you pick, but some of them also come with a definition, giving you some background information that can come in handy as you translate.

To access the ETB, you don't have to have memoQ (even though Kilgray is its first technology partner); you can access it from your own web browser by calling up its URL, http://www.eurotermbank.com/, in which case you'll see something like this at the top of the page:

Fig. 2: The ETB on the internet (showing a window for an advanced search with several options, including definitions)

The subject areas that are covered are displayed in the "domain" field, which is shown on the left when you do an advanced search (click on "Show advanced options" next to the orange search button). If you click on the little arrow there, a drop-down list will appear. Here you can see that the ETB covers a wide range of areas: politics, international relations, European Community law, trade, social issues, education, employment, energy, transport and more... Amazing!

Incidentally, you can also download a special plug-in for Microsoft Word® that will help you with dictionary look-ups while you use that program. This enhancement can help you understand a text better, particularly one in a foreign language – mark a tricky word and then call up the ETB by right-clicking your mouse. Go to "Terminology..." and then a special pane will open listing possible equivalents in various languages.

If you fail to find any terms you look up, the portal enables you to build up a personalised list of such words (in "My ETB"), which you can share with other users from the ETB community if you'd like to.

This is a great resource for translators!

Regards,

Carl

images: ETB website and my own screen shots from memoQ