Word-by-Word Translation

ABBYY Lingvo allows you to translate not only separate words or phrases but entire text fragments.

To get a word-by-word translation of a text fragment:

  1. Type the text you wish to translate in the search field.
  2. Press CTRL+Shift+Enter.

Word-by-word translation is initiated automatically whenever a phrase you are trying to translate is not found neither in the word list nor in the entire text of the dictionaries.

Suppose you need to translate the following sentence into Russian:  He dropped his bag.

In general, the algorithm is as follows:
  1. Select the text fragment you wish to translate.

    Important! The text fragment must not be longer than 32 words.

  2. Press either Ctrl+Ins+Ins or Ctrl+C+C.

    Note: If auto search is on (Tools>Options…>Search>Auto Search…) and the text fragment has no matches in the word list, the program will automatically search for the text fragment in the text of all the enabled dictionaries.

  3. The Search Results dialog box will open, where you can see the translation of the text fragment. If the text fragment is not found in the text of the dictionaries, the Word-by-Word Translation dialog box with translations of separate words and phrases will open.

More about the Word-by-Word Translation dialog box

Show me the Word-by-Word Translation dialog box

For each word or phrase in the left-hand column, its translation from the enabled dictionaries is displayed in the right-hand column. If you hover your mouse pointer over a translation, a tip is displayed indicating the dictionary where the entry has been found.

Clicking a word or phrase in blue font or the "..." sign in the right-hand column, opens all the entries of the enabled dictionaries which correspond to this word or phrase.

For words which have not been found in any of the dictionaries, ABBYY Lingvo will offer a set of spelling suggestions.

Tip: To move to the next link in the dialog box, press Tab; to follow the link, press Enter.