About ABBYY Lingvo


ABBYY Lingvo is the most popular electronic dictionary in Russia

The first edition of ABBYY Lingvo appeared 15 years ago and today more than 4,5m people have chosen it for work, study, and leisure. With ABBYY Lingvo, accurate translations of almost any word a just a mouse click away. You can translate words when reading texts in other applications or when surfing the Internet. Lingvo 10 Multilingual includes 78 (!) general, specialized, and encyclopaedic dictionaries for 5 European languages. All in all, there 10 million translations with detailed comments and illustrative examples. Lingvo includes the latest editions of authoritative dictionaries compiled by eminent lexicographers and ABBYY linguists. The new ABBYY Lingvo 10 is more than just a dictionary.This new version comes with Lingvo Tutor, a program that helps you memorize new words and increase your word power.

Main ABBYY Lingvo 10 Features

10 million words in 78 dictionaries

ABBYY Lingvo 10 contains 10 million words (more than 3.9m entries) in 5 languages. The 10 general dictionaries include the latest editions compiled by renowned Russian lexicographers: M. Zwilling, O. Moskalskaia, E. Leping, L. Scerba, V. Gak, K. Ganchina, B. Narumov, G. Turover, and G. Zorko. The 68 specialized dictionaries cover all major areas of knowledge and human activity: law, economics, patents, finance, accounting, management, marketing and commerce, science and technology, computer science, telecommunications, automobiles, machine engineering, medicine, biology, chemistry, chemical technology, oil and gas industry, food industry, British and US culture. There are also active-study dictionaries and dictionaries of informal and colloquial language.

Keeping pace with language

New dictionaries are constantly being added to the Lingvo bookshelf. Lingvo 10 Multilingual includes 31 new dictionaries and 7 revised and updated dictionaries. 24 of these 32 were published between 2003 and 2004, and some of them have not yet been released in print (as of the date of release, these are Americana II and the Dictionary of Computer Terms by E.M. Proidakov). ABBYY constantly updates its own dictionaries. ABBYY lexicographers have been among the first to record and suggest Russian translations for such new words as cybercrime, taikonaut, and flash mob. LingvoUniversal is the first bilingual dictionary to register a positive meaning of the Russian adjective амбициозный. Many new words and meanings have been brought to our attention by translators, interpreters, language teachers, and other Lingvo users who participate in discussions and send in their feedback at www.Lingvo.ru and www.LingvoDA.ru. Another information exchange point is www.LingvoFanClub.info, a Web site entirely created and maintained by language enthusiasts who regularly use Lingvo dictionaries.

Informative entries with lots of extra information

Each Lingvo entry provides a large number of possible translations for each word sense. In LingvoUniversal, the entry for drive offers translations for 14 noun senses of this word and 14 verb senses. Dictionary entries also contain transcriptions, explanations, grammar comments, illustrative examples, synonyms, and antonyms of the headword. The entry for drive would take up three pages in a printed volume. A further 30 entries provide translations for idioms and collocations with drive. To cap it all, there are also entries for drive in 8 specialized dictionaries, so that you will always be able to select a translation that best fits into your context.

Full-text search

You can search for a word or phrase in the entire text of all the Lingvo dictionaries. This is particularly useful if you need to find information that is buried deep in the body text of the entries. Even though the Lingvo dictionaries run into millions of words, search only takes seconds. Search results are logically structured so that you always know exactly where your search term has been found – in the title of an entry, in comments, or in usage examples. The powerful morphology engine allows you to type in search terms in any grammatical form – Lingvo will instantly recognize the word you are looking for and find all its occurrences in the text. 

Word pronounced by native speakers

You can hear 15,000 most common English and 10,000 most common German words pronounced by native speakers of English and German.

More than 100 additional dictionaries absolutely free of charge. Create your own dictionaries and share them with fellow translators or with the entire Lingvo community!

In ABBYY Lingvo, you can create your own dictionaries and use dictionaries created by other users. Many additional dictionaries are available for download for free from the Web site of the Lingvo Dictionary Association at www.LingvoDA.ru. Currently there are more than 100 dictionaries for various language combinations and subjects. You will find dictionaries for such languages as Arabic, Chinese, and Esperanto. There are dictionaries of idioms, accounting terms, abbreviations, and a lot more.

Lingvo Tutor

If you are learning a foreign language or wish to upgrade your language skills, Lingvo Tutor will prove a good learning aid. This is a “flash card” application which helps you memorize new words and build up your active vocabulary. Create a list of words you wish to learn (or import your search history form ABBYY Lingvo) and set up Lingvo Tutor to create exercises based on these words. You can start an exercise manually or set a timer which will run exercises at regular intervals. Extensive statistics will show you how many words you were going to learn, how many of them you have learnt, and how well you have fared so far. The flash cards you create may contain translations, pronunciations, and usage examples. You can print them out and revise your vocabulary when there is no computer to hand.

User-friendly interface

One of the keys to Lingvo’s popularity is its user-friendly interface. Lingvo is used by home users and professional translators in many companies and organizations: the UN, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Red Cross, LUKoil, Rosoboronexport, Procter & Gamble, Schwarzkoph & Henkel, Coca Cola, PepsiCo Holding, Nestle, Philip Morris, Gillette, Deloitte & Touche, adidas, Dupont, Metro Cash & Carry, Tetra Pak, Michelin Tyres Russia, Continental Tires, Shell, UPS, SUAL, Samsung Software, Samsung Electronics, AVAYA, Canon, Kodak, Panasonic, Merloni Elettrodomestici, Sonic-Duo, CBOS, and others.

PC, Pocket PC, and Palm hanheld support

ABBYY Lingvo can be installed on Pocket PC and Palm hand-held devices as well as on a desktop PC. You can install any of the dictionaries shipped with Lingvo on your handheld device, either into onboard memory or on memory cards.