In our day to day tasks we make a lot of Internet research, Google helped us to get our target in the first page of search hits, and many times in the first hit. For researchers with English language as a second language, a dictionary is essential to make comprehension easier.
Online Users:
For the online user, answers.com gives us a comprehensive word dictionary, it is more than a dictionary, it is a 4+ million definitions, the definitions are comprehensive and – in many cases – you can hear the pronunciation.
To make lookup easier, answers.com offers two options. The first is a FireFox extension that makes lookup much easier, just Alt+double click on any word in FireFox to get the word definition in a small lookup window. Download the extension from http://www.answers.com/main/firefox_plugins.jsp.
To use the Alt + double click on any Windows application not just FireFox, answers.com offers another tool. Download it – Windows based- form: http://www.answers.com/main/download_answers_win.jsp
Offline Users:
Many times, we are offline and need a quality dictionary to lookup words, StarDict is an excellent dictionary, you can use it on Windows or Linux as it is a multiplatform tool. You can have multiple dictionaries and you can also hear word pronunciation.
Download the StarDict components from http://stardict.sourceforge.net/ Here are the steps of installation: (on Windows)
- Download and install GTK+ as it is a prerequisite to StarDict.
- Download and install StarDict.
- Download and install your favorite dictionaries.
- Download and extract the TTS Sound files.
StarDict has many dictionaries other than the English-English ones, as example you can find English-Arabic at http://rpmfind.net//linux/RPM/mandriva/devel/2007.0/x86_64/media/contrib/release/stardict-freedict-eng-ara-2.4.2-3mdk.noarch.html
Although it is an rpm package, you can easily extract contents and install it (on Windows using rpm tool on cygwin).
Non English speakers nowadays have many tools that make English comprehension much easier and enjoyable.