International Lion Dictionary Lookup

[SgtP3pp3r]

Umm, quick question that i couldn't find a thread for:

Is there a way to configure the automatic Lion Dictionary Lookup to search a second language? I sometimes wish the look up feature could give me spanish definitions for certain spanish words, but it only seems to work on english language words.

Oh, and the three finger tap gesture for automatic lookup doesn't seem to work sometimes (and yes, i checked the system preferences and the gesture is activated... just doesn't seem to do anything half the time). I end up having to right click and select "Look up". Not hard to do, but also not what is advertised

 

[superspeedkit]

Concurred

Yea, that feature would be absolutely fantastic, especially as someone who (tries to) read French and German regularly for research. We should pester Apple about it.

 

[tkermit]

If you have installed any 3rd-party dictionaries, you can go into the Dictionary's preferences window, and drag your reference source somewhere to the top. That'll automatically make it appear in the inline dictionary lookup 'popover'.

 

[mamouneyya]

Absolutely you can. I remember that I used an app called DictUnifier which converts dictionaries in StarDict format and automatically add them to Dictionary. That was while using Leopard, and they're all still working great in Dictionary (I am using Loin right now).

You will find a lot of StarDict formatted dictionaries out there, in almost all world languages. I could even find some great Babylon dictionaries that were converted to StarDict format.

 

[didb]

Absolutely you can. I remember that I used an app called DictUnifier which converts dictionaries in StarDict format and automatically add them to Dictionary. That was while using Leopard, and they're all still working great in Dictionary (I am using Loin right now).

You will find a lot of StarDict formatted dictionaries out there, in almost all world languages. I could even find some great Babylon dictionaries that were converted to StarDict format.

You were able to make them work under Lion? Couldn't pull that off so far
Would you be able to upload the already converted .dictionary files?

 

[mamouneyya]

You were able to make them work under Lion? Couldn't pull that off so far
Would you be able to upload the already converted .dictionary files?

The only custom dictionaries that I currently have in my Lion's Dictionary are Arabic-English and English-Arabic Babylon dictionaries. I don't think you're interested to have them, no? Sorry.

PS. Here is a huge list of StarDict formatted dictionaries and here is DictUnifier converter that I previously mentioned. I see from the changelog that the new version is compatible with Lion. Give it a try.