Installing many dictionaries as Firefox and Internet Explorer add-ons

Here are two great tips for translators and for anyone who wants to have easy access to online dictionaries. If you use Firefox or Internet Explorer, you can add many dictionaries to your browser’s search engine (see this example from my FF window with the OneLook search plugin installed).

Tip # 1:

Many popular online dictionaries allow users to install a browser search plugin. But not all of them display this information in a way that’s easy to find. So when visiting an online dictionary’s website, look for your browser’s search box and click on the arrow that you use to select a search engine, like this one:

You’ll get a list of search engines that you have installed. On the bottom of the list you’ll probably see this option: “Add DICTIONARY’S-NAME search”. If you don’t, this may mean that the dictionary doesn’t have a search plugin. If you do, just click on this option to install the dictionary’s search engine on your browser.

I tried this successfully on several popular online dictionaries, like Webster’s Collegiate, Longman, Oxford Advanced Learner’s, Duden, Langenscheidt Fremdwörterbuch, UOL Michaelis, English-Portuguese, Diccionario de la Real Academia Española, PONS German-English, and many others.

It also works on online encyclopedias, including Wikipedia (every language version of Wikipedia has a separate search engine, which I find nothing short of perfect for my daily terminology searches!).

Tip # 2:

Especially if you’re a Firefox user, you may want to go straight to the source of all this: the Mycroft Project offers several hundreds search engine plugins for both monolingual and bilingual dictionaries. These include all the dictionaries mentioned on tip # 1, plus IATE, LEO and many others (in fact, so many, that you’ll probably have to spend a great deal of time browsing the complete list).

This service is not restricted to dictionaries, though. You can also add search engine plugins for encyclopedias, journals, blogs, news websites, online directories, images and several other categories. To browse all categories on the Mycroft Project’s website, follow this link.

This is by far the most useful tool I have found in months, because it boosts productivity and most of the plugins I’m interested in come from very reliable sources such as Duden, Webster’s, Brockhaus, PONS, IATE, Longman etc. and also from favorite user dictionaries like LEO.

So, I hope you enjoy the two tips and have fun on your terminology searches! I most certainly will