for the internet community to
freely use them as well. The linguistic tools were the Logos
Dictionary, a multilingual dictionary with 7 billion words (in fall
1998); the Logos Wordtheque, a multilingual library with 300 billion
words extracted from translated novels, technical manuals and other
texts; the Logos Linguistic Resources, a database of 500 glossaries;
and the Logos Universal Conjugator, a database for verbs in 17
languages.

When interviewed by Annie Kahn in December 1997 for the French daily Le
Monde, Rodrigo Vergara, head of Logos, explained: "We wanted all our
translators to have access to the same translation tools. So we made
them available on the internet, and while we were at it we decided to
make the site open to the public. This made us extremely popular, and
also gave us a lot of exposure. This move has in fact attracted many
customers, and also allowed us to widen our network of translators,
thanks to contacts made in the wake of the initiative."

In the same article, "Les mots pour le dire" (The Words to Tell it),
Annie Kahn wrote: "The Logos site is much more than a mere dictionary
or a collection of links to other online dictionaries. The cornerstone
is the document search program, which processes a corpus of literary
texts available free of charge on the web. If you search for the
definition or the translation of a word ('didactique' [didactic], for
example), you get not only the answer sought, but also a quote from one
of the literary works containing the word (in our case, an essay by
Voltaire). All it takes is a click on the mouse to access the whole
text or even to order the book, including in foreign translations,
thanks to a partnership agreement with the famous online bookstore
Amazon.com. However, if no text containing the required word is found,
the program acts as a search engine, sending the user to other web
sources containing this word. In the case of certain words, you can
even hear the pronunciation. If there is no translation currently
available, the system calls on the public to contribute. Everyone can
make suggestions, after which Logos translators check the suggested
translations they receive."

ONLINE LANGUAGE DICTIONARIES

= [Quote]

WordReference.com was created in 1999 by Michael Kellogg, who wrote on
his project's website: "I started this site in 1999 in an effort to
provide free online bilingual dictionaries and tools to the world for
free on the internet