Google Dictionary • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Dictionary

#11

Post by compay » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:12 PM UTC

est wrote: post #9

nearestneighbor wrote: post #7

needs audio

the English->Chinese has audio http://www.google.cn/dictionary?langpair=en|zh-CN&q=news...

English Spanish has it too.

Re: Google Dictionary

#12

Post by compay » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:14 PM UTC

I hope an Android client is in the works.

Re: Google Dictionary

#13

Post by rajeshrajappan » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:16 PM UTC

tengkahwee wrote: post #10

It would be great if "define: WORD" returns the definitions. It appears to be more better than Wordnetweb's results.

You can actually do that from the Google search box

Re: Google Dictionary

#14

Post by rajeshrajappan » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:20 PM UTC

Now we need an API for this, please!

Re: Google Dictionary

#15

Post by gojomo » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:25 PM UTC

rajeshrajappan wrote: post #13

tengkahwee wrote: post #10

It would be great if "define: WORD" returns the definitions. It appears to be more better than Wordnetweb's results.

You can actually do that from the Google search box

But, a query of [define:WORD] only shows 'web definitions' for WORD. It doesn't show these new dictionary definitions, and it doesn't even include the handy top-right-header link to dictionary definitions that a normal query does!

Re: Google Dictionary

#16

Post by mojuba » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:54 PM UTC

I wish there was Latin too.

Re: Google Dictionary

#17

Post by mdemare » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 12:58 PM UTC

The interface is uniform, but the quality is highly variable. There are some excellent electronics dictionaries on the market, but generally not for free on the web.

Re: Google Dictionary

#18

Post by mdemare » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 1:05 PM UTC

Good dictionaries are hand-compiled by experienced lexicographers. Not Google's strength, to put it mildly.

What Google would be extremely good at is creating corpora for all these languages. An example of an excellent Spanish corpus is the following: http://www.corpusdelespanol.org/x.asp

Re: Google Dictionary

#19

Post by matt1 » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 1:14 PM UTC

"hackers plural
1. A computer hacker is someone who tries to break into computer systems, especially in order to get secret information.

2. A computer hacker is someone who uses a computer a lot, especially so much that they have no time to do anything else."

http://www.google.com/dictionary?langpair=en%7Cen&q=hack...

I guess we're number two?

Re: Google Dictionary

#20

Post by rabidgnat » Fri, Dec 04, 2009, 1:21 PM UTC

For some test English words, it doesn't look any better than Wiktionary:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pants http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ostensibly

http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&#38... http://www.google.com/dictionary?aq=f&langpair=en|en&#38...

As a plus, Wiktionary lets you download their data :). If Google opens this up, then it could get pretty interesting