Lingoes 2.8.1

For those of you who do not know what Lingoes is, here is a brief and to the point explanation: Lingoes is a dictionary and text translation software application. If you are not sure what a word means, you can look it up in the dictionaries provided by Lingoes – this includes free dictionaries, online dictionaries and Wikipedia. If you want to translate a word from one language to another, you can easily do so with Lingoes. The software provides cross translation for over 80 languages and text translation for over 34 languages.

To my mind, there are two reasons why you should give Lingoes a try. First of all, the download weighs in at about 4MB, which means you will download the software onto your machine in no time at all. You don’t have to worry about hidden security threats; Lingoes is spyware and malware-free. The second reason is that Lingoes comes free of charge. If you do not like what the program does, remove it from your system. But if you do, keep it – and perhaps consider supporting the developers by making a donation.

The Lingoes dictionary and multi-language translation software is an interesting combination of a dictionary and translator service, with a bunch of useful tools thrown in for good measure. In this category we should mention tools such as an abbreviation chart, an irregular verbs chart, the periodic table, an international time zone converter, a currency converter, a dialing codes directory, a weights and measures converter, and so on. You can always visit the developer’s webpage and add more tools.

Leaving tools aside, the most useful feature that Lingoes provides is cursor translation. By pressing the Shift key, the software will recognize the word you selected and will provide a translation. Alternatively you can press Ctrl + right click and Lingoes will display a popup window that contains the following information: the definition of the selected word, a search tool to find a deeper definition of the selected word, and an audio file with that’s word’s correct pronunciation.

Lingoes offers to translate more than words, it offers to translate text also (as in sentences). The downside is that machine translations are never that good. On top of that Lingoes relies on Google for the translation function, meaning that some words are not correctly translated. The translation as a whole is a bit disappointing.

Pros
Comes free of charge
Compatible with Windows 7
The English dictionary is quite good
While browsing, you can check the definition of a word with a simple mouse click

Cons
Similar to Babylon.
Machine translations are never that good.
Official website:
http://www.lingoes.net

Lingoes has been reviewed by George Norman on 28 Oct 2009. Based on the user interface, features and complexity, Findmysoft has rated Lingoes 5 out of 5 stars, naming it Essential