The on-line and free dictionary FREELANG is a bilingual dictionary

Dictionary

A dictionary is a collection of words in one or more specific languages, often listed alphabetically, with usage information, definitions, etymologies, phonetics, pronunciations, and other information; or a book of words in one language with their equivalents in another, also known as a lexicon...

 for Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows

Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...

. Founded in 1997 by Beaumont.

FREELANG is free but is under copyright of the authors, and it is collaborative.

History

FREELANG Dictionary has it roots in the Dutch Dictionary Project, started in 1996 by Frits van Zanten and his friend Tom van der Meijden. The project initially consisted of electronic wordlists from Dutch to other languages, but with a team of volunteers around the world, they started to build web sites to distribute the program and some word lists based on their language expertise. In August 1997, the French version was hosted under the name of FREELANG, headed by the French Dutch Dictionary Project lead, Beaumont.

From 1998 to 2000, Frits and Tom progressively stepped out of the project. By the summer of 1998, the Dutch Dictionary Project team consisted of six members—Dario (Italy), Peter (Sweden), Vladimir (Russia), Tom (Norway), Gustaf (Denmark) and Beaumont (France)—who decided to continue with the venture. Vladimir, the Russian Dutch Dictionary Project lead, wrote new scripts to simplify the creation of new dictionaries. The Translation Help Service was created, offering free translations courtesy of a growing team of volunteer translators. In October 2001, both the English and Dutch versions of the Dutch Dictionary Project were brought under FREELANG. The current FREELANG site is managed by Beaumont, based in Bangkok, Thailand

Bangkok

Bangkok is the capital and largest urban area city in Thailand. It is known in Thai as Krung Thep Maha Nakhon or simply Krung Thep , meaning "city of angels." The full name of Bangkok is Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahintharayutthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom...

 since October 2002. In April 2003, the Spanish version was brought under FREELANG. In a major website restructuring in May 2009, English, French, German, Italian, Lithuanian, Russian, Spanish and Thai welcome pages were added, providing a portal to access the English, French and Spanish FREELANG sites.

Language platform

The FREELANG operates four separate language websites: English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

, Dutch

Dutch language

Dutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...

, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

.

Its fellow Dutch Dictionary Project versions include sites in Czech

Czech language

Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

, Esperanto

Esperanto

is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...

, Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 and Russian

Russian language

Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

. At the height of the Dutch Dictionary Project, sites in Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

, German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

, Hungarian

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

, Norwegian

Norwegian language

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants .These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language...

, Polish

Polish language

Polish is a language of the Lechitic subgroup of West Slavic languages, used throughout Poland and by Polish minorities in other countries...

, Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese is a group of Portuguese dialects written and spoken by most of the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil and by a few million Brazilian emigrants, mainly in the United States, United Kingdom, Portugal, Canada, Japan and Paraguay....

 and Swedish

Swedish language

Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

also existed.

Dictionary

Various language modules make up the core of the FREELANG dictionary. Language modules may be accessed through either the on-line interface page or off-line FREELANG dictionary program. While the on-line interface page accommodates all platforms, the off-line dictionary program to access the modules is currently available only for Microsoft Windows. The software is available in English (en), French (fr), Dutch (nl) or Spanish (es).

Translations

FREELANG Translation Help Service provides some translation services for free, as long at is not too long and not for a commercial purpose. The service is accessed through a request form and a volunteer translator replies via e-mail.

External links

• FREELANG Dictionary Website