google-dictionary | Thomas' Work Space

A first look at the Google Dictionary extension for Chrome

2014/03/06 plagwitz Leave a comment

We
1. have not pre-installed in the LRC (for that the extension would need to be more manageable by the teacher during face-to-face classes, which include exams),
2. but can (with some reservations) recommend the Google Dictionary extension (even though it is only available for Chrome). Here is why:
Google dictionary extension provides an interface to Google define and translate
1. that is convenient (as quickly accessed like glosses) for reading activities in many languages (Q: is the privileged word sense displayed here intelligently chosen?)
2. while (for some languages more than for others) providing access to additional word senses, usage examples and historical background information
Interface 1: Tooltip,
1. for English with audio
2. for other languages without audio (even though audio pronunciation may be available in Google translate for that language):
3. convenient access (I have been loving the tooltip interface since Google toolbar days)
4. limited, but useful information,
  1. a word sense – not that this is still not contextually intelligent (Cannot blame them here!) and hence more than one word sense should be offered (here I must blame them: Boo!!): E.g. here “arch” should at show more than the most common word sense:
  2. including pronunciation (not IPA, but audio)
5. Interface 2 (“more”)
  1. For English, a click on “more” leads to the Google “define”search operator (the related etymology search operator has been reviewed here before):
  2. Interface 3: unfold the search results by clicking on the down arrow at the bottom to access additional information: =
    1. additional word sense entries
    2. historical:
      1. etymology
      2. frequency data
    3. translation/dictionary entry:
      1. for our learners of languages other than English, the translation appears right in the tool tip, see above;
      2. for our ESL learners, this seems a few too many steps for accessing this information, although a monolingual dictionary is useful in many instances also.
6. For languages other than English, a click on more leads to Google translate, which (should get its own article, but for what it is worth) can be
  1. more limiting than “define”: While you are given multiple word senses for
    1. Spanish:
    2. and to a lesser extent, for
      1. Arabic:
      2. Hindi:
  2. for many languages the results are much more limiting:
    1. Even if you look up German or French, you revert back to the (pedagogically terrible) single word-sense original “translation” interface )
    2. For East Asian languages, you get Roman alphabet transcriptions
      1. e.g. Chinese with Pinyin:
      2. e.g. Japanese:
Still no per-user tracking? Here it would make sense for the user.