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Free German English Translation
Your Top 3 Free German English Translation Resources
(just try saying that fast!)
If you're thinking about free German English translation resources, then 2 big names immediately spring to mind.
Yes, you guessed correctly - Google and Wikipedia!
(Number 3 is a new kid on the block, and we are delighted to see him - here is a sneak preview.)
Here are a few tips on using these great free online translation resources to solve your tricky German translation problems:
1. GOOGLE
Hurrah for Google’s Advanced Search tools (Erweiterte Suche). Once you've entered your search term on www.google.com and clicked on the search command, you'll see the small Advanced Search link on the left, right at the bottom of the first page of results.
The following are slightly more advanced data mining techniques to help with your German translation queries:Quotation marks: "..."
Help locate entire strings. I use this to check if a German phrase is written correctly, e.g. “eine tolle Idee” - the number of hits will give you a fairly good idea if it’s spelt right or not. Then I can play with variations on the spelling.
Negate unwanted words
Say I’m looking for searches on one word, Hummer (German for lobster) and I am interested in fishing rather than the vehicle of that name, then I click on Advanced Search and enter Hummer and also enter “vehicle” in “But don’t show pages which have”. This should reduce the listings I need to sift through.
Site:www.german-translation-tips-and-resources.com
Search only pages within that particular domain. Useful for finding out if or how a large company or organisation uses a term you are researching, for example.
Correctly translated?
Check your translation (and your spelling!) by entering the German and English term in the search box together (e.g. Patienten + patient). If the two terms occur frequently in the same sentence then you can be pretty sure that your translation is probably correct.
This is especially recommended where the term you are searching for it pretty rare or very specific to a certain field – I’ve just used if for Zuckertusche which is a printing term which translates into English as “sugar-lift”. Google brought up just one listing which was a discourse on the topic itself. Absolutely brilliant.
Plant and animal names
English translations of German flora & fauna can often be hard to find in standard German dictionaries. My tip? Type the German term into the search box, and in many of the listings which Google returns you’ll find the German name accompanied by its official Latin designation. Simply plug the Latin name back into the search box, set language settings to English, and hey presto (usually)! – lists of sites with the Latin name adjacent to its English translation.
Just below the Advanced Search link you’ll find the Language Tools link.
Type in the German phrase or word grouping you need to translate
(e.g. Automatische Herstellungsverfahren), enter “German” under “My language” and select “English” under “Search pages written in”. As well as functioning as an automatic free online language translator(“Translated to:Automated manufacturing processes”), this brings back a list of site pairings – English and German versions of the same site - which include this term, allowing you to assess the context in which the phrase is used.
2. WIKIPEDIA
NEW! - Manypedia (www.manypedia.com) is a new, free German English translation tool from Wikipedia. Designed for Comparing linguistic points of view (LPOV) of different language Wikipedias!, it compares texts on a subject in 2 different Wikipedia languages, making it a great resource for the German translator for terminological research into a new subject area.
How does it work?
Search box top left: Call up an English Wikipedia page entry (e.g. “Angela Merkel”) and ask Manypedia to compare it with the German Wikipedia page entry. The German and English pages are then displayed side-by-side, the German entry having been automatically translated into English. And the translation-relevant tool? - The “concept similarity” between the two texts is given in % terms. This is the real benefit for your German translation – the higher this %, the more useful the German article is as a terminology guide once you disable translation (link top right) and return the German Wikipedia article to its original German. |
When it comes to German translation, Wikipedia’s chief asset lies in publishing pages in so many different languages, often automatically providing you with a free German English translation. Here are a few of the “Wiki-Tips” I can offer as a result!
German names/proper nouns – do they have translations?
Go to Wikipedia’s German start page (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauptseite) and type the German name in the search box. When your query is returned, look down the column on the left-hand side and if they also offer a version of this page in English. Click on “English” and it’s “Hey presto!” again, your topic in English. This is also a great way of reading around the subject and picking up associated vocabulary on the topic which your translation addresses.
German place names
Look up German place names you haven’t heard of – many historical names which reflected the reaches of the German Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire have now been translated into their local equivalents (e.g. Troppau – is now Opava, in the Czech Republic). The subject of your translation (context!) will determine whether the historical German name or modern translation is most appropriate in your English text.)
3. LINGUEE
Linguee is an online service which pulls up German texts and their English translations from all over the net, highlighting both the German word/phrase you are searching for and the ways in which it has been translated. It's USP is showing translations as they relate to the overall text context. Here's how it works, and you can try it out here.
Happy researching with these free German English translation tools!
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