# Few recommendation (if I may)



## alex-old

Mike,

Having made your site my default home page, I was sad to learn the withdrawal of Collins. Yet I red your note with a lot of interrest and wish you the best success is your new approach.

Although I know the current status is far from stable, I may dare few recommendations/comments...

1/ For non-english natives, pronunciation is (sometimes) almost as important as the correct spelling (have a try with "to play draughts" with french people   ). Previous version had the equivalence display. I hope that would remain the case in the future site.

2/ Having (as it is currently the case) automatically displayed the "reverse-translation" section (e.g. "From the English to French side") is indeed very convenient. I hope you will keep it...

3/ Every often, I go to the pure-english definition of a word, just to cross-check which of the proposed alternatives matches my need best. For "foreign to english" results, it would be very convenient to go to the definition by just clicking on one of the alternates. For the "english to foreign" results, it would be convenient to have (for ex at the end of the page) the english definitions of the searched word (instead of having it available through the "Definition" url).

Hope this help    
And again: good luck!


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## GuyCraig

Hi Mike,

While I'm sorry to see the Collins relationship end, I am happy with what you have done so far with the French/English and mostly pleased with the Italian/English. I will miss the German/English Dictionary greatly ( I guess I was one of the few that used it!  )

I hope that you will continue to give both forms of English equal weight... both American English and British English. English is frequently so confusing to non-native speakers ( sometimes to native speakers too! ) and when the American/British differences are thrown into the mix... sometimes they just want to give up.

The old German/English dictionary had wonderful examples of idioms. I hope the new dictionaries will be able to include good examples because they are so helpful to non-native English speakers.

My wish for good luck too!


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## mkellogg

Thank you both for your nice words.  It sure is better than all the hate-mail I have been receiving lately.

First Alex, the pronunciation symbols are returning soon, but first I have a lot of other problems to fix.  Till then, click on the "Spanish" link to get the pronunciation symbols within the English-Spanish dictionary.

You like the reverse translation?  I only implemented that in an effort to provide more content for the French and Italian to English sides  (which need a lot of work), but maybe I will keep it up longer...

I like your third suggestion of adding the English definitions at the end.  Let me see if I can do that and not create too large of a page.  And clicking the words?  Do you like the double-click functionality that has been set up for Spanish-English?


GuyCraig,
It's good to see that my efforts with the French and Italian are being appreciated already!  I am working extremely hard at these two languages right now and have been updating and database multiple times each day.  Look for rapid improvement...  It might be a couple of months before regional differences will be correctly marked though.

Thanks again,
Mike


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## Kathie

I agree with the Marylander, it's such a lost! When I look up a German word, I often use a combination of results among PONS (the iFinger software with PONS), Collins on Wordreference, and Dict.leo.org. All of them are good and useful, none of them were complete for me because I need to search for special words for my major (biotech).  For example, the word wirbel or wirbelschicht, Collins's translation into English is far better than the others, in the context of my bioreactors class.

That's why I miss Collins.

Kathie


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## Governor

GuyCraig said:
			
		

> I will miss the German/English Dictionary greatly ( I guess I was one of the few that used it!  )



I am also frustrated that the German dictionary has been discontinued. Wordreference.com was the ultimate web-site dictionary for me because it was easy-to-use and had both French and German. I am a student and rely greatly upon easy dicionaries for studying. However the break with Collins has really annoyed me because I cannot find a site remotley close to wordreference in terms of quality and simplistic layout.

Mike, you're the head of the site, right? I'm new here, but I just wanted to convey my feelings about the German dictionary's discontinuation. Is there no other way possible to get it back up and running with another dictionary?

Gov.


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## mkellogg

Another dictionary?

I have talked to other publishers of large German dictionaries without success. The big, international publishers (names starting with L & O) are not interested.  If anybody in Germany wants to contact a local publisher who might be interested, please do so...  If you find a large dictionary that isn't too expensive for me to license, I'll put it up on the site!

Mike


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## Genesee

mkellogg said:
			
		

> Another dictionary?
> 
> I have talked to other publishers of large German dictionaries without success. The big, international publishers (names starting with L & O) are not interested.  If anybody in Germany wants to contact a local publisher who might be interested, please do so...  If you find a large dictionary that isn't too expensive for me to license, I'll put it up on the site!
> 
> Mike



Mike,

First, as a frequent visitor, let me thank you for your work on this great site.  It is one of those sites that really exemplifies the power and efficiency delivered by this medium.

On the German dictionary, if you are not able to come to an agreement with an existing publisher, have you considered a community-based approach, along the lines of what wikipedia has done?  Or perhaps a collaboration between WR and wikipedia or some similar setup?  I am not familiar with licensing issues, etc., but given the very active and prolific user communities of the sites, it seems like some arrangement might be worked out.

In any event, best of luck, and thanks again.


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## Ladydean

Mike, 
This is the first chance I have had to extensively explore the forum... wow, it is cool. I wrote comments on a previous thread that were a mix of good/bad, I hope you don't take them to harsh. I figured I should mention that wordreference has been my default home page at both work and home... I really really hope I can keep it so (i.e. get the edge back), so I am going to try to keep up with the work you are doing to improve the site, especially the Wikepedia suggestion. Although I have to re-iterate-- the italics in the Eng-Eng is too much.


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## Ladydean

And, as good luck from me too. 

Ladydean


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## mkellogg

Homepage, wow.

I'm not sure if the site will be homepage material for the next few months...but my goal is quite ambitious here.  I'm pretty certain that the large majority of you will like the results, and you all will be happy with the site once again.


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## Red Kite

I will add that Wordreference was an excellent resource and I happily promoted it elsewhere. Since French is the main language I study, I was a little disappointed that Wordreference did not at least have the larger concise version of the Collins-Robert French dictionary, but I think that was because of Collins, not Mike. I found the unabridged German and English dictionaries particularly impressive resources.

My suggestion would be to make Wordreference the dictionary equivalent of Wilkipedia and get teachers, linguists, translators and native speakers to continually add words and translations, updating and refining these regularly. I see no reason why this group couldn't rival the Collins word banks on contemporary language use, we just need enough people particularly native speakers to contribute in order to make that happen.


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