WEBSITE OF THE DAY: Babylon.com

Babylon.com
A friend of mine told me about this site. It’s a compilation of 25 professional dictionaries in 17 languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Japanese, Hebrew, Chinese (Traditional), Chinese (Simplified), Dutch, Russian, Korean, Swedish, Greek, Arabic and Turkish.) It has translation software that offers results from a database of 1,400 sources in 75 languages. My friend uses it for Indonesian correspondences (he does business over there). Whenever he comes across a word he’s unfamiliar with, he simply holds down the control key, right clicks over the word and presto - instant translation! The neat thing about it is that you can do the same with words like nugatory or neuston and get the Oxford English Dictionary definition, as well as those from other dictionaries. Pretty cool and easy to use. The only downside is that at $89, it’s a bit pricey.