= Quote

WordReference.com was created in 1999 by Michael Kellogg, who wrote on his project’s website:  “I started this site in 1999 in an effort to provide free online bilingual dictionaries and tools to the world for free on the internet.  The site has grown gradually ever since to become one of the most-used online dictionaries, and the top online dictionary for its language pairs of English-Spanish, English-French, English-Italian, Spanish-French, and Spanish-Portuguese.  Today, I am happy to continue working on improving the dictionaries, its tools and the language forums.  I really do enjoy creating new features to make the site more and more useful.”

= From print versions

The first online language dictionaries stemmed from print versions, with websites launched in the mid-1990s.

On the website “Merriam-Webster Online:  The Language Center”, Merriam-Webster, a main publisher of English-language dictionaries, gave free access to online resources stemming from its print publications.  The online resources were:  Webster Dictionary, Webster Thesaurus, Webster’s Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International Business Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive vocabulary quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot new words).  The goal was also to help track down definitions, spellings, pronunciations, synonyms, vocabulary exercises, and other key facts about words and language.

The “Dictionnaire Francophone en Ligne” was the web version of the “Dictionnaire Universel Francophone”, published by Hachette, a major French publisher, and the University Agency for Francophony (auf:  Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, also known as AUPELF-UREF).  The dictionary included not only standard French but also the French-language words and expressions used worldwide.  French is the official language of 49 states, with a number of them in Africa, and is spoken by 500 million people worldwide.  The Agency of French-speaking Countries (Agence de la Francophonie), which has included the auf, was founded in 1970 as an instrument of multilateral cooperation at the international level.  As a side remark, English and French are the only official and/or cultural languages that are widely spread on five continents.

= Directories of dictionaries

Directories of dictionaries have been useful too, such as “Dictionnaires Électroniques” (Electronic Dictionaries), an online catalog of electronic dictionaries maintained by the French Section of the Swiss Federal Administration’s Central Linguistic Services (SLC-f:  Section Francaise des Services Linguistiques Centraux).  The catalog included five main sections:  abbreviations and acronyms, monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, and geographical information.  The catalog could also be searched by keywords.

Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of Central Linguistic Services, which means he was in charge of organizing translation matters into French for the linguistic services of the Swiss government.  He wrote in January 1999:  “Our website was first conceived as an intranet service for translators in Switzerland, who often deal with the same kind of material as the Federal government’s translators.  Some parts of it are useful to any translators, wherever they are.  The section “Dictionnaires Électroniques” is only one section of the website.  Other sections deal with administration, law, the French language, and general information.  The site also hosts the pages of the Conference of Translation Services of European States (COTSOES). (...) To work without the internet is simply impossible now.  Apart from all the tools used (email, the electronic press, services for translators), the internet is for us a vital and endless source of information in what I’d call the ‘non-structured sector’ of the web.  For example, when the answer to a translation problem can’t be found on websites presenting information in an organized way, in most cases search engines allow us to find the missing link somewhere on the network.”

How about the future?  “We can see multilingualism on the internet as a happy and irreversible inevitability.  So we have to laugh at the doomsayers who only complain about the supremacy of English.  Such supremacy isn’t wrong in itself, because it is mainly based on statistics (more PCs per inhabitant, more people speaking English, etc.).  The answer isn’t to ‘fight English’, much less whine about it, but to build more sites in other languages.  As a translation service, we also recommend that websites be multilingual. (...) The increasing number of languages on the internet is inevitable and can only boost multicultural exchanges.  For this to happen in the best possible circumstances, we still need to develop tools to improve compatibility.  Fully coping with accents and other characters is only one example of what can be done.”

The section “Dictionnaires Électroniques” was later transfered on the website of the Conference of Translation Services of European States (COTSOES), when COTSOES launched its own website.

= The yourDictionary.com portal

Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, created the website “A Web of Online Dictionaries” (WOD) in 1995.  In September 1998, the website provided an index of 800 online dictionaries in 150 languages, as well as specific sections:  multilingual dictionaries, specialized English dictionaries, thesauri and other vocabulary aids, language identifiers and guessers, an index of dictionary indices, the Web of Online Grammars, and the Web of Linguistic Fun (i.e. linguistics for non-specialists).

Robert Beard wrote in September 1998:  “There was an initial fear that the web posed a threat to multilingualism on the web, since html and other programming languages are based on English and since there are simply more websites in English than any other language.  However, my websites indicate that multilingualism is very much alive and the web may, in fact, serve as a vehicle for preserving many endangered languages.  I now have links to dictionaries in 150 languages and grammars of 65 languages.  Moreover, the new attention paid by browser developers to the different languages of the world will encourage even more websites in different languages.”

A few months later, Robert Beard co-founded a larger project, yourDictionary.com, that included his previous website and was launched in February 2000.  He wrote in January 2000:  “The new website is an index of 1,200+ dictionaries in more than 200 languages.  Besides the WOD, the new website includes a word-of-the-day-feature, word games, a language chat room, the old ‘Web of Online Grammars’ (now expanded to include additional language resources), the ‘Web of Linguistic Fun’, multilingual dictionaries; specialized English dictionaries; thesauri and other vocabulary aids; language identifiers and guessers, and other features; dictionary indices. yourDictionary.com will hopefully be the premiere language portal and the largest language resource site on the web.  It is now actively acquiring dictionaries and grammars of all languages with a particular focus on endangered languages.  It is overseen by a blue ribbon panel of linguistic experts from all over the world. (...) Indeed, yourDictionary.com has lots of new ideas.  We plan to work with the Endangered Language Fund in the U.S. and Britain to raise money for the Foundation’s work and publish the results on our site.  We will have language chatrooms and bulletin boards.  There will be language games designed to entertain and teach fundamentals of linguistics.  The Linguistic Fun page will become an online journal for short, interesting, yes, even entertaining, pieces on language that are based on sound linguistics by experts from all over the world.”

How about the future of the web?  “The web will be an encyclopedia of the world by the world for the world.  There will be no information or knowledge that anyone needs that will not be available.  The major hindrance to international and interpersonal understanding, personal and institutional enhancement, will be removed.  It would take a wilder imagination than mine to predict the effect of this development on the nature of humankind.”

= Terminological databases

Some terminological databases are run by international organizations in their own field of expertise, with free online versions, for example iloterm maintained by the International Labor Organization (ilo), termite (itu Telecommunication Terminology Database) maintained by the International Telecommunication Union (itu), WHOTERM (who Terminology Information System) maintained by the World Health Organization (who), and Eurodicautom maintained by the European Commission.

ILOTERM is a quadrilingual (English, French, German, Spanish) terminology database maintained by the Terminology and Reference Unit of the Official Documentation Branch (OFFDOC) at the International Labor Office (ilo) in Geneva, Switzerland.  As explained on its website, ILOTERM’s primary purpose is to provide solutions, reflecting current usage, to terminological problems in the social and labor fields.  Terms are entered in English with their French, Spanish and German equivalents.  The database also includes records for the ilo structure and programs, official names of international institutions, national bodies and employers’ and workers’ organizations, and titles of international meetings.

Termite (which stands for:  Telecommunication Terminology Database) is maintained by the Terminology, References and Computer Aids to Translation Section of the Conference Department at the International Telecommunication Union (itu) in Geneva, Switzerland.  It is a quadrilingual (English, French, Spanish, Russian) terminological database built on the content of all itu printed glossaries since 1980, and updated with recent entries.

WHOTERM (which stands for:  Who Terminology Information System) is maintained by the World Health Organization (who) in Geneva, Switzerland.  It has included:  (a) the who General Dictionary Index (in English, with the French and Spanish equivalents); (b) three glossaries in English:  Health for All, Programme Development and Management, and Health Promotion; (c) the who TermWatch, an awareness service from the Technical Terminology, reflecting the current who usage, but not necessarily terms officially approved by who, and links to health-related terminology.

Eurodicautom, a multilingual terminological database maintained by the Translation Service of the European Commission, was initially developed to assist in-house translators.  The free online version was used by European Union officials and by language professionals throughout the world.  Its contents were available in the eleven official languages of the European Union (Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish), plus Latin.  Eurodicautom covered “a broad spectrum of human knowledge”, mainly relating to economy, science, technology and legislation in the European Union.  In late 2003, the website announced the inclusion of the existing database into a larger terminological database that would also include databases from other official European institutions.  The new terminological database would be available in more than 20 languages, because a number of Eastern European countries were expected to join the European Union in the near future, thus the need for more languages than the eleven original ones.  The European Union went from 15 country members to 25 country members in May 2004, and 27 country members in January 2007.  The website of iate (Inter-Active Terminology for Europe) was launched in March 2007 as an eagerly awaited free service on the web, with 1.4 million entries in 24 languages.

= Wikipedia

Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on).  It has quickly grown into the largest reference website on the internet, financed by donations, with no advertising.  Its multilingual content is free and written collaboratively by people worldwide, who contribute under a pseudonym.  Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can edit, correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia.  The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to the GFDL (gnu Free Documentation License).

Wikipedia had 1.3 million articles (by 13,000 contributors) in 100 languages in December 2004, 6 million articles in 250 languages in December 2006, and 7 million articles in 192 languages in May 2007, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish.  In August 2009, Wikipedia was among the top five websites in the world, with a total of 330 million visitors a month.

Wikipedia is hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation, founded in June 2003, which has run a number of other projects, beginning with Wiktionary (launched in December 2002) and Wikibooks (launched in June 2003), followed by Wikiquote, Wikisource (texts from public domain), Wikimedia Commons (multimedia), Wikispecies (animals and plants), Wikinews, Wikiversity (textbooks), and Wiki Search (search engine).