how to add new dictionaries on mac osx?

September 24, 2012 11:10 AM

Is there any way of adding new dictionaries to the system dictionary app for Mac OSX? I am learning russian and would love to be able to highlight a word and receive an english-to-russian or even just russian definition.

I am running the latest version of mountain lion.

posted by 221bbs to computers & internet (5 answers total)

I don't think what you describe is possible.

Dictionaries map words (or mispellings of words) to definitions. What you want is to map an English word to an English Definition to a Russian Definition to a Russian Word, and that's a little beyond the scope of the system dictionary.

Perhaps you could find some translation software or use Google Translate?
posted by RonButNotStupid at 11:34 AM on September 24, 2012

Assuming you are viewing any of the text in question in a web browser, there are add-ons such as gTranslate and Google Translator for Firefox that may fit the bill.

You also may wish to check out Learning With Texts (free) or LingQ (freemium).
posted by Tanizaki at 11:38 AM on September 24, 2012

Yikes! I meant to type Russian to English!
posted by 221bbs at 11:50 AM on September 24, 2012

I get this effect by using the Google dictionary browser plugin for Chrome. This one. Just checked on a Russian radio website, works great. You highlight a word and if it's English, you'll get a dictionary definition, if it's foreign, you get a translation.
posted by Ender's Friend at 6:33 PM on September 24, 2012

You can do that with various Firefox browser add-ons; just search the add-ons page for "translate" and you'll see several.
posted by limeonaire at 7:18 PM on September 24, 2012