A reader sent me a link to Fora Reader, which calls itself "a foreign reading tool with a simple-dedicated-embedded browser, rapid word translations, dictionary management, and text annotation for viewing with any web browser":
Written in the Java programming language, Fora is cross-platform and internationalized. It works on Windows XP/Vista, Mac OS X and Linux operating systems and currently available in English, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Russian, Arabic and Portuguese interfaces (note that the translations are in beta stage). Currently it has only one comprehensive English-English dictionary out-of-box due to file size and bandwidth constraints.Being too lazy to download and try the thing myself, I thought I'd ask if anyone else has done so, and if so what they thought of it. Posted by languagehat at October 1, 2009 08:34 PMFora uses various types of inline tooltips to display translations and never suspends reading/browsing activity by using well-tailored tooltips right around the word to be translated.
Relatively on topic, compared to the first three
comments:
Iceland is land, an island named Ísland.
That is all.
Posted by: John Emerson at October 2, 2009 07:55 AMFor various reasons Iceland's changing its name to Geyserville.
Posted by: A. J. P. Hiekkasaari at October 2, 2009 08:21 AMI sland, you sland, we all sland for Iceland.
Posted by: language hat at October 2, 2009 08:47 AMWhat's with the slanted commenting? Let's hear both sides!
Posted by: Sili at October 2, 2009 10:18 AMFora Reader is an ideal application for;
* Language students
* Translators
* People studying languages as a leasure activity
Not to be too smug, but if I were advertising a language service I'd probably try to get my spelling and punctuation rightish.
Posted by: A. J. P. Hiekka-Aavikko at October 2, 2009 10:28 AMFora uses various types of inline tooltips to display translations and never suspends reading/browsing activity by using well-tailored tooltips right around the word to be translated.
And what an awful sentence this is! My internal grammatical tooltips are telling me that "by" modifies "suspends", but then my semantic tooltips come along and say that it's modifying "never suspends".
Posted by: Slant O'Slash at October 2, 2009 11:31 AMUsing XULRunner - great, hover to translate - awesome. But where do we get the dictionaries to use with it?
Posted by: bulbul at October 2, 2009 03:39 PMWhat a relief!
I've always had to tailor my tooltips outline, crowding cowtipping off my leasure calendar.
Now me and Flossie are back in the 'infinitesimal hovering' biz.
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[Eckt-shoo-uh-leh, "leasure" might be a cleverly pleisurable pun.]
Posted by: deadgod at October 2, 2009 03:59 PMI have nothing against misspelling and I abhor petty-minded nitpicking at the expense of dyslexics. I don't like it in a dictionary, though.
Posted by: A. J. P. Hiekkarannalla at October 2, 2009 04:11 PMÍsland's i.d. is .is.
Posted by: John Emerson at October 2, 2009 05:06 PM