LANGUAGE TOOLS ONLINE
7/13/06spg, rev. 12/103/10rem
See Cataloger’s Desktop, and the Cataloging Manual for DIACRITICS AND OTHER SPECIAL
CHARACTERS and ROMANIZATION AND NON-ROMAN SCRIPTS.
General Resources or Meta Sites
http://www.yourdictionary.com/languages.html Directory of online dictionaries for over 280
languages. Includes both general as well as specialized dictionaries, and also grammar and
linguistic resources.
http://www.omniglot.com An online guide to the major writing systems. Especially useful for
seeing examples of the countless non-Roman alphabets and scripts in existence.
http://dir.yahoo.com/Reference/Dictionaries/Language Yahoo’s directory of online
dictionaries listed by language.
http://www.atla.com/tsig/Foreign_Lang_presentation/Foreignlangpresindex.html Links and
handouts from: Tackling the Foreign Language Backlog: Preconference Workshop at the
ATLA Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon, June 25, 2003, presented by Richard a. Lammert.
Includes sections on using ISBN prefixes to identify countries of publication, lists of initial definite
and indefinite articles by language, advice on edition statements in foreign languages, a Fraktur
chart, and tips on Romanization of numerous languages.
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/initart.htm List of initial articles by language from
Yale Music Cataloging.
http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bdapp-e.html Complete list of initial articles in
alphabetic order from LC.
http://130.15.161.74/techserv/cat/Sect02/dirlang.htm#contents From Queens University: Foreign
language equivalents for bibliographic information (Dutch, French, German, Italian, and
Spanish).
http://staff.library.mun.ca/staff/toolbox/lang/biblang.htm Glossary of bibliographic information
by language (Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese,
Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish).
http://lcweb.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/roman.html LC Transliteration tables
http://www.wordgumbo.com/index.htm WordGumbo – another aggregator for tons of languages,
but of lexicons (mostly flat HTML files that you scroll through to find a given word).
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/cyrillic.htm Cyrillic language alphabets and how
they diverge from one another.
http://translit.cc/ A Cyrillic transliteration site, with a Cyrillic alphabet on-screen “keyboard” that
you can click on. Also includes Greek, Armenian, Belarusian, Ukranian, Bulgarian, and Georgian.
The transliteration is probably not the same system as ALA’s, though.
Language tools online – p. 2
Dictionaries
http://wordreference.com/ Word Reference – Online Language Dictionary. Includes Spanish,
French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Russian, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Turkish,
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Arabic. Also includes links to further online dictionaries.
http://www.langtolang.com/ From Language to Language – Online Language Dictionary for over
50 languages (including some unusual ones, like Corsican, Walloon, Swahili, Indonesian, Gaelic,
Georgian, and so on).
http://en.bab.la/dictionary/ bab.la dictionary – Translations for about 16 languages (including
Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Hindi). Includes colloquial and regional expressions, as well as
technical or field-specific vocabulary.
http://www.logos.it/ A single-word translator, for multiple languages.
http://iate.europa.eu/ InterActive Terminology for Europe. A somewhat clunky single-word
translator for European languages. The good part is that it translates and expands abbreviations.
http://dictionaries.travlang.com/ TravLang translating dictionaries – another aggregator. If you
can stand the format of the websites (lots of advertisements, so that it’s difficult to find the real
content), they might be useful.
Translators
http://translate.google.com/ Google Translate - allows for a variety of languages.
http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn Alta Vista’s Babelfish translation service.
http://www.freetranslation.com/ English to various languages and vice versa.
http://dictionary.reference.com/translate Dictionary.com translates text from Chinese, Dutch,
French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Russian.
http://gramtrans.com/ Translator for English, Swedish, Danish, Portuguese, and Norwegian works between these five languages - also allows for translations into Esperanto.
http://www.woxikon.com/ Woxikon translates words and word sequences in Dutch, English,
French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
Language Identifiers
http://legacy.xrce.xerox.com/competencies/content-analysis/tools/guesser.en.html
XEROX Language Identifier. Best used with roman alphabet languages, including Turkish. Great
for distinguishing between similar languages (Norwegian/Danish, Slovenian/Croatian, Spanish/
Catalan).
http://yourdictionary.com/morph.html#guessers Actually a meta-site. Scroll to the bottom of the
page for links to seven different language identifiers.
Language tools online – p. 3
Foreign Libraries
http://lists.webjunction.org/libweb/ Libweb: Library servers via WWW. Features directories of
links to over 800 library catalog gateways on the WWW, organized by country.
http://www.library.uq.edu.au/ssah/jeast/ Links to National Library Catalogues worldwide.
Compiled by the University of Queensland, Australia.
http://www.ubka.uni-karlsruhe.de/hylib/en/kvk.html KVK: Karlsruhe virtual catalog. Allows you to
search simultaneously the holdings of many major libraries in Germany, Austria, Switzerland,
France, Spain, and the UK. It functions as a sort of European Union Catalog. Individual library
catalogs may also be searched singly. KVK also provides access to German book trade online
catalogs, such as abebooks.de and amazon.de.
http://wess.lib.byu.edu/index.php/European_Library_Catalogs Links to European Library
Catalogs, organized by country. From the Western European Studies Section of ACRL.
http://library.cuhk.edu.hk/ University Library System, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Provides an English-language interface to the OPAC of the Chinese University of Hong Kong,
with records in pinyin and Chinese vernacular.
http://webcat.nii.ac.jp/webcat_eng.html NACSIS Webcat. Provides an English-language
interface for searching a union catalog of books and materials in the library collections of national
universities and other institutions of Japan.
Individual Languages
Arabic
http://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/acm/acmmain.html Arabic Cataloging Manual from
Princeton University.
http://www.xrce.xerox.com/Research-Development/Historical-projects/Linguistic-Demos/ArabicMorphological-Analysis-and-Generation
Xerox Arabic Home Page. This is the gateway to the Xerox Arabic Morphological Analyzer and
Generator, which accepts Modern Standard Arabic words and returns morphological analyses
and English glosses. Arabic words are displayed in Arabic scripts using Java applets.
Catalan
http://www.diccionaris.net/engcerca.php Catalan-English dictionary
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/catspan.htm Distinguishing between Catalan and
Spanish
Chinese
http://www.mandarintools.com/pyconverter.html Chinese Romanization converter (i.e. converts
from one style of Romanization to another)
Czech
http://www.slovnik.cz/ English and Czech and English
French
Language tools online – p. 4
http://www.granddictionnaire.com/btml/fra/r_motclef/index1024_1.asp
Le grand dictionnaire terminologique
http://humanities.uchicago.edu/forms_unrest/FR-ENG.html
French to English dictionary (ARTFL Project)
German
http://dict.leo.org/ German and English and German and German and other language
combinations
http://dict.tu-chemnitz.de/ German and English, etc.
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/fraktur.htm
Fraktur
Greek
http://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/katmandu/greek/welcome.html Guide to Greek
Usage in Cataloging from Princeton University. Primarily for Modern Greek.
Hebrew
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/hebraicateam/ Yale University Library’s Hebraica Team
website
http://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/katmandu/hebrew/hebrewtoc.html Hebrew
Cataloging Manual from Princeton University
http://www.i18nguy.com/unicode/hebrew-numbers.html Hebrew numbers and counting.
Hungarian
http://szotar.sztaki.hu/index.hu.jhtml Hungarian and English and Hungarian and Hungarian with
various other languages
http://www.sztaki.hu/?en English and Hungarian and English dictionary - along with other
Hungarian and other language combinations
Italian
http://www.aromatic.com/itaeng/ R-O-Matic Italian/English Dictionary – translates words in either
direction.
Language tools online – p. 5
Korean*
http://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/KOREAN/korean_english_dic.pdf A scanned version of the Martin/Lee
Chang dictionary from Yale University Press. Unfortunately not searchable, since it’s a pdf.
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/arc/libraries/eastasian/korea/ckm/manual A manual on
“Korean librarianship outside of Korea” by Joy Kim, from the University of Southern California.
Includes guides for transliterating and cataloging Korean materials.
* Note – For more information about cataloging Korean materials, see the AUTOCAT post included at the
end of this document.
Norwegian
http://decentius.hit.uib.no/lexin.html?dict=3Dnbo-eng-maxi&checked-languages3DN&checkedlanguages Norwegian and English and other language combinations with Norwegian
Persian
http://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/katmandu/persian/perstoc.html Persian Cataloging
Manual from Princeton University.
Polish
http://www.poltran.com/ Polish and English
Portuguese
http://www.portoeditora.pt/especial/index/documento/DOL Free Portuguese / English /
Portuguese dictionary, but requires registration.
Slavic languages
http://library.princeton.edu/departments/tsd/katmandu/sgman/slindex.html Slavic Cataloging
Manual from Princeton University
http://www.indiana.edu/~libslav/slavcatman/ Indiana University’s Slavic Cataloging Manual
Spanish
http://www.spanishdict.com/ Spanish to English dictionary and translation
http://eubd1.ugr.es/RIS/RISWEB.ISA English <> Spanish Dictionary from Granada University in
Spain.
Swedish
http://lexin.nada.kth.se/swe-eng.html Swedish and English and Swedish and Swedish with other
language combinations
http://lexin.nada.kth.se/sve-eng.html Swedish-English-Swedish dictionary
Welsh
http://www.cs.cf.ac.uk/fun/welsh/LexiconForms.html Welsh-English-Welsh dictionary
Language tools online – p. 6
Other Technical Services Pages and Cataloging Resources on Languages
http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/cataloging/catref/langresources.html Pennsylvania State
University Libraries Cataloging and Metadata Services: Language Resources and Reference
Materials (including for English)
http://www.library.yale.edu/cataloging/music/musicat.htm#language Yale University Libraries,
from their Music Cataloging Site: Language Tools.
* Korean (from an AUTOCAT posting from Misha Schutt, 4/13/09)
Unfortunately, though the Korean alphabet is easy, the McCuneReischauer transliteration is not as straightforward as Cyrillic or
Arabic, because it varies with the pronunciation in a way that's
somewhat helpful to non-Korean speakers but tends to confuse Koreans-when certain consonants come together, the results vary with specific
words.
Fortunately, I have a good dictionary to check those spots--the
Martin/Lee/Chang dictionary from Yale University Press, which is
unfortunately out of print, but is fortunately freely available at
http://altaica.ru/LIBRARY/KOREAN/korean_english_dic.pdf (a scanned
version, so not searchable). The dictionary uses the more precise Yale
Romanization rather than McCune-Reischauer, so you unfortunately have
to get used to two systems to use it.
If you've ever looked at the LC transliteration manual for Korean,
you've probably been scared off--it doesn't even give the basics, but
starts right out with the exceptions. Thanks to Joy Kim at USC, there
is an excellent (wonderful, even) manual available online for
transliterating and cataloging Korean materials, at
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/arc/libraries/eastasian/korea/ckm
/manual
---------------------Unfortunately, I've just found that the site hosting that Korean
dictionary downloads at glacial speed--my browser has been tied up for
several minutes now, trying to open the 212-Mb page in Acrobat Reader
within a browser window. If anybody wants to use it or even just
examine it, go to the parent page at http://altaica.ru/e_v-korean.htm
and right-click to save the file directly to your disk. Then you can
do something else with your browser while you're waiting...
Misha Schutt
Catalog Librarian
Burbank (Calif.) Public Library
(818) 238 5570
mschutt@ci.burbank.ca.us