Ultralingua is a single-click and

drag-and-drop In computer graphical user interfaces, drag and drop is a pointing device gesture in which the user selects a virtual object by "grabbing" it and dragging it to a different location or onto another virtual object. In general, it can be used to ...

multilingual translation dictionary, thesaurus, and language reference utility. The full suite of Ultralingua language tools is available free online without the need for download and installation. As well as its online products, the developer offers premium downloadable language software with extended features and content for

Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

and

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

computer platforms,

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

s, and other hand held devices.

Features

In addition to the main user interface of the

electronic dictionary An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including software installed on tablet or desktop computer ...

, a ‘

hotkey In computing, a keyboard shortcut (also hotkey/hot key or key binding) is a software-based assignment of an action to one or more keys on a computer keyboard. Most operating systems and applications come with a default set of keyboard shortcu ...

’ feature allows the user to click on a word in any program that uses editable text including web browsers and

PDF Portable document format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe Inc., Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, computer hardware, ...

documents, and

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

. When a word is clicked, the translation or definition is displayed in a small pop-up window. The hotkey tool does not require previous launching of the software application. The word stemming function allows searches from

inflected In linguistic Morphology (linguistics), morphology, inflection (less commonly, inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical category, grammatical categories such as grammatical tense, ...

forms of a word into the root word, such as in French, (''allez'' → ''aller'') with further extension by

lemmatisation Lemmatization (or less commonly lemmatisation) in linguistics is the process of grouping together the inflected forms of a word so they can be analysed as a single item, identified by the word's lemma, or dictionary form. In computational lingui ...

. Full verb conjugation in all tenses, and number conversion from digits to text in the available languages (e.g. "123" → "one hundred twenty-three"), are available through the program interface, as well as free access to online examples of language in use, and a discussion forum moderated by linguists and lexicographers. The search algorithms are tolerant of capitalisation, minor misspelling, and omitted accents and

diacritics A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

. Extensive lexical information is provided including irregular plurals, irregular verb forms, phrases and examples of use,

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

and

British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...

variations, and grammar references. IPA transcription is given, while several language modules are also enabled for text-to-speech. The application interface can be either permanently displayed above or alongside any other open program windows, or allowed to ‘float’ above open windows and is resizable. An integrated learning tool provides a full screen

flashcard A flashcard or flash card is a card bearing information on both sides, usually intended to practice and/or aid memorization. It can be virtual (part of a flashcard software) or physical. Typically, each flashcard bears a question or definition ...

feature that can work with the words in the language databases, and user-added definitions.

History

The concept of the Ultralingua dictionary software began in 1996, when a small group of professors from

Carleton College Carleton College ( ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Northfield, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866, the main campus is between Northfield and the approximately Carleton ...

had the idea of creating a French dictionary that allowed the user to look up words on the fly with

technology, to and from a work in progress. The dictionary program was first developed for the

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

only. It was launched as

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

in 1997 under the name of ''Le Francophile'' and distributed mainly on the cover floppy discs of Mac magazines. It was commercialised in 1999, as

shareware Shareware is a type of proprietary software that is initially shared by the owner for trial use at little or no cost. Often the software has limited functionality or incomplete documentation until the user sends payment to the software developer. ...

as a fully functional application that could be obtained online from download sites. By the year 2000, with the collaboration of additional specialists in lexicography and linguistics, the product range had expanded to include language modules for Spanish and German, and was released for

. A French-German module was added in 2002. Concurrent with the opening of the Apple

App Store An app store, also called an app marketplace or app catalog, is a type of digital distribution platform for computer software called applications, often in a mobile context. Apps provide a specific set of functions which, by definition, do not i ...

in 2008, the language tools were launched for the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

. The major languages and features of the dictionary program have been offered free online since 2005 and take into account all the improvements of regular releases. By 2009 the software package was offering 17 dictionaries and additional language tools for widely spoken world languages. Version 7.1.4 (Mac) and version 7.0.0.0 (Windows), released in the fall of 2008 and May 2009 respectively, incorporated a completely redesigned GUI and addressed many of the suggestions for improvement made in an exhaustive independent evaluation of version 6.0 by the State University of Texas (

CALICO Calico (; in British usage since 1505) is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than ...

). Though many people have been involved in the development of Ultralingua's code and data, the founders and main contributors to its development are the Chair Professors of Carleton's Linguistics and Computer Science departments. Elements of Ultralingua software have been developed in collaboration with

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...

, and The Carnegie Mellon Pronouncing Dictionary, by

Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The institution was established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical Schools. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institu ...

. Additional code libraries used include contributions by CTGradient, ShortcutRecorder (BSD License), PTHotKey, Sparkle for application updates, and the hotkey code includes software licensed from TrufSoft.com.

Available dictionaries

From its own in-house lexicographers the software provides proprietary

bilingual dictionary A bilingual dictionary or translation dictionary is a specialized dictionary used to Translation, translate Word (linguistics), words or phrases from one language to another. Bilingual dictionaries can be ''unidirectional'', meaning that they list ...

modules for French-English, Spanish-English, German-English, Italian-English, Portuguese-English, Norwegian-English, French-Spanish, French-Italian, French-German, Spanish-German, Spanish-Portuguese, Esperanto-English, Latin-English, and English and French monolingual dictionaries and thesauri. As well as its own language data sets, third-party modules include an English-French medical dictionary licensed from Masson, the French division of

Elsevier Elsevier ( ) is a Dutch academic publishing company specializing in scientific, technical, and medical content. Its products include journals such as ''The Lancet'', ''Cell (journal), Cell'', the ScienceDirect collection of electronic journals, ...

, the world's largest publisher of medical and scientific literature, an English-

Klingon The Klingons ( ; Klingon language, Klingon: ''tlhIngan'' ) are a humanoid species of aliens in the science fiction franchise ''Star Trek''. Developed by screenwriter Gene L. Coon in 1967 for the Star Trek: The Original Series, original ''Star T ...

dictionary developed in collaboration with the Klingon Language Institute and

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

, and bilingual corpora developed in association with

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is a British–American publishing company that is considered to be one of the "Big Five (publishers), Big Five" English-language publishers, along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group USA, Hachette, Macmi ...

. The co-branded Dictionaries from Collins, Masson, and Simon & Schuster are for use exclusively with Ultralingua software. The developer also has agreements with

McGraw-Hill McGraw Hill is an American education science company that provides educational content, software, and services for students and educators across various levels—from K-12 to higher education and professional settings. They produce textbooks, ...

and Hachette for publication and distribution of print and CD-ROM versions of its dictionaries. Other programs separately available that are based on the Ultralingua technology include Grammatica, a spell and grammar check utility, and Distinguo, an

API An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how to build ...

for

semantic search Semantic search denotes search with meaning, as distinguished from lexical search where the search engine looks for literal matches of the query words or variants of them, without understanding the overall meaning of the query. Semantic search seek ...

Evaluation and Criticism (v 6.0)

It has been suggested in an independent evaluation by CALICOhttps://www.calico.org/p-383-Ultralingua%20(012008).html CALICO (4,500 words) headquartered at the State University of Texas that the lexical content of the dictionaries tested with version 6.0 (2006) fell short on several issues: namely that the lack of systematic information on usage, regional variants, and examples in context diminished to a certain extent the value of these tools; and that entries needed to be organized into coherent and easily identifiable sections, with priority given to primary meanings between the language 1 and language 2. So, too, cultural and geographical entries included in the monolingual dictionaries needed to be expanded to cover all countries in which the language is spoken. The evaluation went on to state that despite their shortcomings, which decrease each time a new version is released, given the size of each of the dictionaries, the entries are reasonably comprehensible and offer useful information for language learners, particularly in the dictionaries with more complete databases.

Platforms (current releases)

Mac OS X,10.3.+; Windows 2000, NT, XP, Vista, Windows 7; Windows Mobile; Palm OS; Pocket PC; Smartphone; iPhone; Symbian

References

{{reflist

External links

Ultralingua web site
Dictionary software Classic Mac OS software MacOS text-related software Windows text-related software Online dictionaries Reference material lists