Babylon now is free

[bugmenot1]

yeah, really wish lingoes will have better wildcard search functions...

or if goldendict can open lingoes' dicts.

[midoziad]

In this version they improve and update the English-Arabic and Arabic-English
English-Arabic now has 163800 entries 394686 in total
previous version this dictionary has 51362 and 138880 in total
....
Arabic-English now has 77245 entries 848424 in total
previous version this dictionary has 67011 and 493275 in total
Words like these lathwork, fender bender, highfaluting I found them in new one

It is the biggest English-Arabic dictionary I ever saw .

and I took it to run in Goldendict

can you please tell us how to get that dictionary?

[chulai]

or if goldendict can open lingoes' dicts.

I don't think GoldenDict desktop will support Lingoes LD2 format any time soon. Search the forum, there are plenty of posts explaining why is that so.

[hanyl05]

It is meaningless to support lingoes LD2 dictionary. No more could compile new dictionaries except for the author himself ---the project is almost died.

In addition, the emergence is very late, so most of Lingoes dictionaries is converted from stardict or Babylon, or mdx.
And it is not source-opening.

[Alec]

If I understand correctly, dictionaries *created* by Babylon (i.e. not those in BGL format but created by someone else) can be used in other software, such as GoldenDict, but only if the user has a valid licence for Babylon.

However, the latest version of Babylon is free.

Does that mean that anyone can install Babylon, then ignore it, and legally use its dictionaries in other programs?

I can't find anything in the Babylon licence that forbids that.

[chigre-GD]

at least, this has been done:
>>mdx format support (Still active in China, although most of dictionaries with this format are converted from stardict and lingvo. anyhow, it is quite active)

[hanyl05]

I recommend someone could consider seriously about Epwing format, which is a official format in Japan.Dictionaries in this format are usually high quality, the same as the paper version.

[encyclopedia]

I mean to be able to translate or invoke the program with a click of a mouse. When I used to use Babylon I would often open it with a Ctrl + Right click. Nowadays I achieve more or less the same result with GoldenDict + Autohotkey script. But Babylon allowed to invoke the program (with the mouse) with no need to select any text to translate. Similar to GoldenDict's Ctrl + F11 + F11.

I highly agree with this point. This feature is, imho, one of the top most convenient things I found with Babylon. I wish GoldenDict could implement something similar: (1) extract the word (OR relevant PHRASES that exist in the dictionaries index, Babylon somehow managed to do this!) from the text flow at a mouse click (2) and activate the full program window and display the search result.

[Tvangeste]

I wish GoldenDict could implement something similar: (1) extract the word (OR relevant PHRASES that exist in the dictionaries index, Babylon somehow managed to do this!) from the text flow at a mouse click (2) and activate the full program window and display the search result.

1. GoldenDict can also search for phrases when you type. Say, you entered "be", and if there is a headword "let it be" in the dictionary, GoldenDict will show it in the suggestion list.

2. You could set this in preferences, so that instead of pop-up window a full GoldenDict window is shown.

[Goldli]

1. GoldenDict can also search for phrases when you type. Say, you entered "be", and if there is a headword "let it be" in the dictionary, GoldenDict will show it in the suggestion list.

2. You could set this in preferences, so that instead of pop-up window a full GoldenDict window is shown.

I tried this out. And yes it works. But when I enter the word “give” in GoldenDict, in this way, for example I have a selection from:

give
give a chance
give a cold shoulder to
give a concert
give a dog a bone
give up
...
to give a character
not give a damn
given
giver
gives
giveable
given name
Indian giver

-> and so on (a total of 57 different suggestions)

Comparison: Phrase translation Babylon vs. GoldenDict

-> 1. Sentence: I give you a present.
-> 2. Sentence: You give up.

1. Sentence:
When I click with Babylon on "give" in the first sentence, Babylon translate the word at once: "geben". Babylon remarks oneself that in this case there is no phrase.
When I translate it with GoldenDict I get a list with 57 different suggestions. When I am very bad in English I do not know if there exists a phrase such as "I give" or "give you" and I have to search through the list.

2. Sentence:
When I click with Babylon on "give" in the second sentence, Babylon remarks oneself that in this case there is the phrase "give up" and it translates it with "aufgeben".
When I translate it with GoldenDict I get a list with 57 different suggestions. Now, I have to search for the phrase "you give" and "give up".

In my opinion, the way how Babylon can recognise phrases is a very big advantage of Babylon.
May be it is very hard to implement that in GoldenDict.