LEO (website)

Last updated
LEO GmbH
Leo.org (logo).png
Type of business GmbH
Type of site
Online dictionaries
Available inGerman (source language), English, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Polish
Founded3 April 2006
Headquarters Sauerlach, Germany
Employees16
URL www.leo.org
Advertising Google AdSense, image banners and buttons
Registrationoptional
Launched5 June 1994
Current statusactive

LEO (meaning Link Everything Online) is an Internet-based electronic dictionary and translation dictionary initiated by the computer science department of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. After a spin-out, the dictionaries have been run since 3 April 2006 by the limited liability company Leo GmbH, formed by the members of the original Leo team, and are partially funded by commercial advertising on the website. Its dictionaries can be consulted free online from any web browser or from LEO's Lion downloadable user interface (GUI), which is free since version 3.0 (released 13 January 2009), to private users only, and no longer sold as shareware. Corporate users and research institutions are however required to purchase a license.

Contents

Dictionaries

The website hosts eight free German language based bilingual dictionaries and forums for additional language queries. The dictionaries are characterized by providing translations in forms of hyperlinks to further dictionary queries, thereby facilitating back translations. The dictionaries are partly added to and corrected by large vocabulary donations of individuals or companies, partly through suggestions and discussions on the LEO language forums.

For any of the eight foreign languages, there's at least one (in the cases of English and French two) qualified employee in charge (whose mother tongue is either German and who has studied the respective other idiom or vice versa). These employees oversee the above-mentioned donations and suggestions before integrating them in the dictionary. Thus, an entry can never be simply made by a registered user. These registered users, on the other hand, have the possibility to communicate in the eight different forums where native German speakers and the other native speakers collaborate alike, providing help with finding idiomatic equivalents for phrases or texts etc. [1]

English–German

The English-German dictionary run by Leo since 1995 contains around 800,000 entries and receives an average of 11 million queries per weekday. [2]

French–German

In 2004, a FrenchGerman dictionary was added to the site's services and has about 257,000 entries. This one gets about 2.6 million queries each weekday. [3]

Spanish–German

A Spanish–German dictionary with about 208,000 entries was introduced on 3 April 2006. It gets about 2 million queries each weekday. [4]

Italian–German

An Italian-German was started on 3 April 2008. At the time of the public launch, the dictionary contained about 140,000 entries and received 77,000 queries on the first day. [5]

Chinese–German

The Chinese–German dictionary was started on the same date as the Italian–German dictionary, 3 April 2008. Queries can be entered by using Pinyin, or traditional or simplified characters. [6] The dictionary started with about 65,000 entries and received about 93,000 queries on the first day. [7] Today it contains about 195,000 entries and receives an average of 240,000 queries each weekday. Due to text encoding limitations, the Chinese dictionary cannot be used in the interface.

Russian–German

On 18 February 2009, LEO announced [8] a forthcoming release of a German–Russian dictionary. The starter database has been provided in collaboration with ABBY Europe GmbH, the producers of the Lingvo dictionary brand.

The new dictionary became publicly available on 12 April 2010 after a couple of testing days. It started with 77,934 entries and received 38,800 queries on 13 April 2010. As the dictionary only went online in the evening it only received 3,607 queries on its first day. [9]

Today it contains about 300,000 entries and receives an average of 370,000 queries each weekday. [9]

Portuguese-German

A dictionary for the Portuguese language was announced in early 2011 and first launched in January 2013. As of September 2018, it contains more than 100,000 entries, receiving about 210,000 queries each weekday. [10]

Polish-German

In 2013, a Polish-German dictionary was started which contains over 74,000 entries by November 2019 and receives almost 80,000 queries every weekday. [11]

History

The site grew out of a network of FTP software and archived data which was put together by students at Munich University of Technology and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich even before HTML and HTTP existed. The original aim was to create a single, huge archive by linking up archives run by the different research groups (hence its name LEO – Link Everything Online. The archive was sorted thematically and the different sections organised and kept up to date by archivists.

When the World Wide Web came into common use, HTTP access to the archive was at first added as an alternative to FTP. Students developed various services in their free time, in particular the dictionaries. Some services have been dropped in the course of the spin out.

Name

The name of the site is actually a backronym from the name Leo: the Bavarian coat of arms features a lion. Originally, the service was named ISAR (a backronym for Isar river, on the banks of which Munich is situated; here, ISAR stood for Informations Systeme und Archiv München, but it had to be renamed as there was another firm of the same name.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Austrian German</span> Variety of Standard German

Austrian German, Austrian Standard German (ASG), Standard Austrian German, Austrian High German, or simply just Austrian, is the variety of Standard German written and spoken in Austria and South Tyrol. It has the highest sociolinguistic prestige locally, as it is the variation used in the media and for other formal situations. In less formal situations, Austrians use Bavarian and Alemannic dialects, which are traditionally spoken but rarely written in Austria. It has been standardized with the publishing of the Österreichisches Wörterbuch in 1951.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictionary</span> Collection of words and their meanings

A dictionary is a listing of lexemes from the lexicon of one or more specific languages, often arranged alphabetically, which may include information on definitions, usage, etymologies, pronunciations, translation, etc. It is a lexicographical reference that shows inter-relationships among the data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Archie (search engine)</span> FTP search engine

Archie is a tool for indexing FTP archives, allowing users to more easily identify specific files. It is considered the first Internet search engine. The original implementation was written in 1990 by Alan Emtage, then a postgraduate student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wiktionary</span> Multilingual online dictionary

Wiktionary is a multilingual, web-based project to create a free content dictionary of terms in all natural languages and in a number of artificial languages. These entries may contain definitions, images for illustration, pronunciations, etymologies, inflections, usage examples, quotations, related terms, and translations of terms into other languages, among other features. It is collaboratively edited via a wiki. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki and dictionary. It is available in 192 languages and in Simple English. Like its sister project Wikipedia, Wiktionary is run by the Wikimedia Foundation, and is written collaboratively by volunteers, dubbed "Wiktionarians". Its wiki software, MediaWiki, allows almost anyone with access to the website to create and edit entries.

DICT is a dictionary network protocol created by the DICT Development Group in 1997, described by RFC 2229. Its goal is to surpass the Webster protocol to allow clients to access a variety of dictionaries via a uniform interface.

<i>Deutsches Wörterbuch</i> German language dictionary

The Deutsches Wörterbuch, abbreviated DWB, is the largest and most comprehensive dictionary of the German language in existence. Encompassing modern High German vocabulary in use since 1450, it also includes loanwords adopted from other languages into German. Entries cover the etymology, meanings, attested forms, synonyms, usage peculiarities, and regional differences of words found throughout the German speaking world. The dictionary's historical linguistics approach, illuminated by examples from primary source documents, makes it to German what the Oxford English Dictionary is to English. The first completed DWB lists over 330,000 headwords in 67,000 print columns spanning 32 volumes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scouse (food)</span> Stew made from meat, potatoes and onion

Scouse is a type of stew typically made from chunks of meat, usually beef or lamb, with potatoes, carrots and onion. It is particularly associated with the port of Liverpool, which is why the inhabitants of that city are often referred to as "scousers". The word comes from lobscouse, a stew commonly eaten by sailors throughout northern Europe in the past, and surviving in different forms there today.

<i>Abrogans</i>

Abrogans, also German Abrogans or Codex Abrogans, is a Middle Latin–Old High German glossary, whose preserved copy in the Abbey Library of St Gall is regarded as the oldest preserved book in the German language.

<i>The Klingon Dictionary</i>

The Klingon Dictionary (TKD) is a book by Marc Okrand describing the Klingon language. First published in 1985 and then again with an addendum in 1992, it includes pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. It has sold more than three hundred thousand copies and has been translated into five languages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dictionary (software)</span> Dictionary application for macOS developed by Apple Inc.

Dictionary is an application developed by Apple Inc. as a part of macOS. The application provides definitions and synonyms from various dictionaries, Wikipedia articles and a glossary of Apple-related terms.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic dictionary</span> Dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media

An electronic dictionary is a dictionary whose data exists in digital form and can be accessed through a number of different media. Electronic dictionaries can be found in several forms, including software installed on tablet or desktop computers, mobile apps, web applications, and as a built-in function of E-readers. They may be free or require payment.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sylt North Frisian</span> Dialect of the North Frisian language

Sylt Frisian, or Söl'ring, is the dialect of the North Frisian language spoken on the island of Sylt in the German region of North Frisia. Söl'ring refers to the Söl'ring Frisian word for Sylt, Söl'. Together with the Fering, Öömrang, and Heligolandic dialects, it forms part of the insular group of North Frisian dialects. It differs from the mainland dialects because of its relatively strong Danish influence. Due to mass tourism on Sylt, the dialect has been largely displaced by forms of German and Söl'ring is spoken only by a few hundred people, many of whom no longer reside on Sylt. Although it is taught in several primary schools, its prospects for survival are unfavorable compared with other insular dialects. An online dictionary is available for looking up German to Söl'ring translations and vice versa.

The CMU Pronouncing Dictionary is an open-source pronouncing dictionary originally created by the Speech Group at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) for use in speech recognition research.

The Österreichisches Wörterbuch, abbreviated ÖWB, is the official spelling dictionary of Standard German in Austria, i.e. of Austrian Standard German. It is edited by a group of linguists under the authority of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture and contains a number of terms unique to Austrian German or that are more frequently used or differently pronounced there. A considerable amount of this "Austrian" vocabulary is also common in Southern Germany, especially Bavaria, and some of it is used in Switzerland as well. The most recent edition is the 43rd from 2017. Since the 39th edition from 2001 the orthography of the ÖWB was adjusted to the German spelling reform of 1996.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Response to sneezing</span> List of responses to sneezes in multiple languages

In English-speaking countries, the common verbal response to another person's sneeze is "[God] bless you", or, less commonly in the United States and Canada, "Gesundheit", the German word for health. There are several proposed bless-you origins for use in the context of sneezing.

JMdict is a large machine-readable multilingual Japanese dictionary. As of March 2023, it contains Japanese–English translations for around 199,000 entries, representing 282,000 unique headword-reading combinations. The dictionary files are free to use with attribution and have been widely adopted on the Internet and are used in many computer and smartphone applications. The project is considered a standard Japanese–English reference on the Internet and is used by the Unihan Database and several other Japanese–English projects.

translatewiki.net, formerly named Betawiki, is a web-based translation platform powered by the Translate extension for MediaWiki. It can be used to translate various kinds of texts but is commonly used for creating localisations for software interfaces.

dict.cc is a free, multilingual online dictionary. For offline use the dictionaries can be downloaded as text files and used in various programs on Windows, iOS, Android and Palm OS. Dict.cc GmbH have their main office in the Austrian capital city of Vienna.

References

  1. "LEO Wörterbuch: FAQ". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013.
  2. "LEO: Dict-Statistik". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012.
  3. "LEO: Dict-Statistik". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012.
  4. "LEO: Dict-Statistik". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 7, 2012.
  5. "LEO: Dict-Statistik". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 5, 2013.
  6. "LEO Wörterbuch: Suchtipps". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013.
  7. "LEO: Dict-Statistik". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on February 4, 2013.
  8. "Pages". dict.leo.org. Archived from the original on June 14, 2012.
  9. 1 2 "Russisch ⇔ Deutsch Wörterbuch - leo.org: Statistik". dict.leo.org. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
  10. "Portugiesisch ⇔ Deutsch Wörterbuch - leo.org: Statistik". dict.leo.org. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
  11. "Polnisch ⇔ Deutsch Wörterbuch - leo.org: Statistik". dict.leo.org. Retrieved 2024-01-24.
Some of this article was translated from the German language version of this page.