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| Wikipedia as a translator of nouns | 2 0 0 7 |
Feb 13 |
Most people don’t even know about it but right at the bottom of the left sidebar of every pedia there’s an in other languages section that turns out to be one of Wikipedia’s pearls.
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the mathematical concepts of an upper bound (mayorante in Spanish), a set (insiemi in Italian) or a tuple (n-uplet in French);
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computer concepts like scrollbar (Bildlauf in German; literally, imagecourse), web browser (navigateur web in French; literally, web navigator), hyperlink (collegamento ipertestuale in Italian), real-time (Echtzeit in German), multimedia (multimedialità in Italian), and operating system (système d’exploitation in French);
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relatively unknown Greek gods like Cybele (CibelesCB in Spanish) or Priapus (Priape in French);
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exotic (anything really)
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animals like the civet (Schleichkatzen in German) and the platypus (ornitorinco in Spanish);
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fruits like the passion fruit (maracujá in Portuguese) and the jackfruit (yaca in Spanish);
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plants like the okra (gombo in French), the spearmint (yerbabuena in Spanish; literally, goodgrass), the mandrake (mandragora in Spanish), and the jimson weed (higuera del infierno in Spanish; literally, infernal fig);
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flowers like the fuchsia (bellebloem in NedersaksischWP), the medlar (níspero in Spanish), and the saffron (azafrán) in Spanish);
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animals like the civet (Schleichkatzen in German) and the platypus (ornitorinco in Spanish);
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neologisms like meme meme (mème in French), GM food (alimento transgénico in Spanish), and the long tail (longue traîne in French, sometimes longue queue);
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international phrases like to be, or not to be (Sein oder Nichtsein in German) and Land of the Rising Sun (La Tierra del Sol Naciente in Spanish);
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digital accoutrements like inkjet printer (Tintenstrahldrucker in German), touchpad (pavé tactile in French), or flatbed scanner (escáner plano in Spanish; literally, flat scanner);
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drug paraphernalia/jargon like chillum (chiloom in Italian), syringe driver (Spritzenpumpe in German), rolling machine (interpercolatrice in Italian), bong (pipe à eau in French), and withdrawal syndrome (síndrome de abstinencia in Spanish);
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translatable acronyms like NAFTA (TLC in Spanish), NATO (OTAN in French), USSR (CCCP in Russian), or GDP (BIP in German);
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or simply peculiar expressions like popular science (divulgación científica in Spanish; literally, scientific divulgation), conspicuous consumption (prangende forbruk in Norwegian), prince charming (príncipe azul in Spanish; literally, blue prince), intellectual property (immaterialrätt in Swedish; literally, immaterial rights), apple of discord (Zankapfel in German), or noble savage (buen salvaje in Spanish; literally, good savage).
Sep 3, 2009 Update: Another great, passive implementation is Koume_S’s Wikipedia polyglot dictionary Greasemonkey script, which will substitute the language list for the corresponding words. Beautiful!
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