Dictionary Linguee 9+

I’m primarily using this for French, and I have to write a review to say that this has by far been the best app I’ve downloaded for translations. They have just about every translation for every possible meaning of a word, and if that wasn’t enough the examples they give you at the bottom are native speakers using that word in context. It has everything you could need and more when it comes to precise translations.

The only gripe I have with this app is how much it freezes and crashes. Searching up a word can take up to 5 whole seconds to process. The web version is much smoother, and if you can, I would recommend using that over the app at the moment. However, if you need translations offline, this is still a great translater app and site in general.

I am a native English speaker who speaks Spanish well, but not often. For the speaker whose grammar is good, but who needs an active vocabulary of the words you commonly use in English, Linguee is the perfect tool. It’s a very comprehensive translation engine for anyone seeking the context and subtlety that matches the way you normally speak English, without having to flounder around in a static vocabulary dictionary. The beauty is that there are scores of snippets of published speech, so you can easily and quickly choose the translation that most closely matches the closes sense of meaning you intend. I have searched quite a bit, and have yet to find a better product for learning, and for keeping my vocabulary growing. It really works well.
-Scott
Portland, OR.

I’ve been using this dictionary a lot over the last few months. It has a lot of great features. For instance, it will show you idiomatic phrases related to the word you’re looking up. This is really handy. It also will show you examples of the word in action, culled from the web.

It is however, unstable and more dependent on Internet access then it claims to be, even if you’ve downloaded an offline dictionary. Periodically after a dozen or so look ups the application starts to get very slow. Often I will type of word and nothing happens for 10 to 15 seconds. Over time this gets worse until finally the only recourse is to force quit the application and restart it.

This morning I reached the final straw. I fired up the app and noticed that it said I didn’t have an Internet connection, which I totally did. Looking upwards now simply spawns a spinning wheel and never any definitions. So I guess I’m done with it. It’s too frustrating.