Best dictionaries, thesauri & translators according to redditors
We found 43 Reddit comments discussing the best dictionaries, thesauri & translators. We ranked the 19 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.
3 or so years ago I bought a Wikireader off amazon for sheer curiosity sake. It's a simple touch screen interface with backup of Wikipedia saved to it (sans pictures) so you can look stuff up without an internet connection. You can also use it to hold The Gutenburg Project, turning it essentially into a $20 e-reader. Also you can hack around with the software if you want, though I'm not aware of any really ambitious projects written onto it other than what it already does.
It seems kind of really useless, and for the most part it is for a lot of people, but it can be useful if you don't have a steady internet connection but still want to look things up on wikipedia, and the unlit screen reduces strain on my eyes when I'm about to go to sleep when I'm suddenly hit with grand curiosity about how rap music evolved or something.
If you look at older science fiction movies, you'll see that a lot of it has already been invented.
Are you talking about electric dictionaries like this? Those were very popular in China and I think Japan as well for learning English. You can potentially cheat with them, but I don't think most people who use them are cheating.
Woops, forgot to mention amazon has them on sale for $20 (down from $99)
wikipedia pocket reader?
edit
and think you can download updates.. despite amazon claim i dont think it is the entire wikipedia.. just the most looked at bits.you can download updates or even have them mailed to you and download different languages and it is the complete thing, runs on double a batteries as they are available world wide and has a capacitive touch screen.. pretty cool.
As a child, I became keenly aware of the numerous factual errors in the expensive encyclopedia set my parents owned. I'd take Wikipedia over a commercial encyclopedia any day. In fact, I bought my daughter a WikiReader.
Agreed. imagine how valuable this would be to a post-collapse society.
My husband and I are planning on giving our kids WikiReaders pretty early on. We're both big on promoting them to ask their own questions and find their own answers, and Wikipedia is a good resource for that. A WikiReader is nice because it will let them go off on research tangents, but in a limited and controlled space.
You could buy on of these wikireaders, as they're compact and pretty cheap.
I'm truly impressed. I haven't touched a DG in over twenty years.
> The most common problem? Serial cards die from electric shocks thru the cabling.
Optoisolators. This one commands a princely sum but this 7-wire and especially this 3-wire unit seem quite reasonable. East Asia has them too.
I got a robotic goldfish for my son when he was 3 years old. Its still "alive" today, incident free!
I have Norwegian as my first language, but most of the books I read are in English, as I prefer to read books in the language they were originally written in. My sister got me something really useful: an electronic dictionary bookmark . It's been super-helpful.
This.
But CaffeinatedGuy, that's just a stupid little wikipedia reader. Who in their right mind would want that?
Anyone who wants to be ready for the Apocalypse (or similar large-scale catastrophe).
What is this geekery you ask? Well, with the addition of a small memory card, I can download the entirety of Wikipedia's knowledge, Wikiquotes, and several other websites, preformatted for viewing on a portable device that runs on, you guessed it, AA batteries.
When civilization collapses and you can't figure out how to extract iron from rock, you can't look it up online. I'll have it in my pocket.
When I'm rebuilding civilization with hard work, dedication, and leadership (assisted with details on famous generals and leaders), women will beg to bear the fruit of my loins, for I am the greatest leader they have ever known.
For these reasons, and many others, this little tiny hackable electronic device shall from this day forward be known as:
The manliest item on Amazon
Well, I bought a wikireader. At the time, they were $10 with free shipping. It is certainly worth the $10 I spent. It doesn't have text-to-speech, but it works on a couple of triple-As and is readable in high lit areas
When this popped up on my front page I assumed it was from /r/shittykickstarters.
I could get behind an initiative that, eg, sent out $20 wikireaders to poor villages loaded up with useful information in local languages, but something like this is a ludicrous waste of resources. How the heck do you go from "we need a cost effective way to make sure poor people around the world have access to information!" and have your end goal include building freaking micro-satellite networks and mass distributing devices capable of communicating with them? And you think you can do that for 100K because you can put in "sponsored content"? Why would companies be interested in advertising to people so desperately poor they would benefit from a crappier one-way internet? How much cocaine was involved while brainstorming this?
For those who don't know what a wikireader is:
http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W
Checkout the Pomera DM100 from Japan. It probably the best such device you are going to find.
You could also go with the Freewriter, which is bigger, heavier and costs three times as much, not to mention looking like it was designed in the 1970's.
EDIT though really modern laptops and OS's have sleep modes which do mean that they are pretty much instant on devices. And its not too hard to find a laptop that will go eight+ hours on a charge, especially if all you are doing is running a word processor on it.
That was easy! Now you've made me miss Gamby! Shame on you! ;P
I think the perfect thing to bring around Tokyo would be a guide to the city along with a pocket translator. When I lived in Japan with my family, my sister had a Japanese friend who communicated with her using a pocket translator. It was a really awesome tool to use to communicate to the friendly people of the city.
As for my favorite memory of Disney, I went with my family a few times to Tokyo Disneyland, which was so fun! Several years later, my mom and I went on a school trip to Disney World in Florida. I had never gone on the Star Wars ride in English and it was really cool to be able to flash back to the time we were in Japan and experience something familiar in a different way with my mom.
Disney is Heaven!
Thank you for the contest!
Edit: Bonus story- As a child, I was so convinced that I had a voice just like Ariel, that I got into a heated argument with my friend about it. I finally got so frustrated that I said, "I can too sing like Ariel, and I'll prove it!" I then fell to the floor like Ariel at the bottom of the cave, my hair spread out and I started singing, "Ahhhahhahhhhhh! Ahhhahhhahhhh!" as Ariel did in the movie. ;P
I can sing just like Ariel. I really, really can. For really real.
What's your price range?
Does she have an audio Bible? I hear they have simple MP3 players fully stocked with the Bible in its entirety. It seems safe. It helps her read Scripture when her eyes begin failing, and it's not too complicated to work. This particular model is currently going for about $30.
(It's an affiliate link, but you don't have to use it).
Hope this helps.
I want to build this speech timing light so I don't have to buy this official light
I've never used one, but WikiReader seems like an interesting product. With everyone being able to just pull up live Wiki pages from your phone, there isn't much market for this little guy, but when SHTF, being able to use AAA batteries and not having to rely on a network connection would be pluses in my book.
I don't think you can use your own SD cards though. They sell yearly updated cards (about $20), but they may be using one of the already available offline wikipedia downloaders/formatters.
http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W/ref=cm_rdp_product
I've got one of these babies: https://www.amazon.com/Seiko-Britannica-Encyclopedia-Dictionary-Thesaurus/dp/B000A1ONM0
Full encyclopedia that's been edited in a form factor small enough to fit into your pocket with battery life that will last for months and no connection to internet needed.
You: it's like... the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Wow.
Me: a potential new hobby.
I love Kevin. Thanks for gifting!
It sounds to me like you're planning to manually switch the lights. If you want to build that, maybe copy this design: https://www.amazon.com/Toastmasters-Timing-Light-Timer-Included/dp/B00L44M9FK ... no logic is involved and no Arduino needs to be.
But... this is a perfect Arduino project.
I think I would use an Adafruit Neopixel Ring 12 (it has 12 LEDs that are multicolored). You can use your programming to let it display dim white for all but the last two minutes, change it to green for qualified, yellow during the warning minute, and then red.
You can program it with long button presses
lights
If color blindness was a concern, we can do something with patterns (gentle double blink pulse on yellow)
Hardware
If you want to do your own timing and light switching, you can change the usage case in your programming
Nothing automatic will happen. You don't really need an Arduino for that.
https://www.amazon.com/Mawrid-Speaking-Dictionary-Multimedia-Device/dp/B00Q1W4T5S
Looks like this is a newer version
So I got this for free. Keepa shows no sales rank and camel shows its rank has been steady at 4,000ish for a while. Would you send this in to amazon? I bought 2 cr2032 batteries to test it. Would you send it in with the batteries?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000W8905Q/ref=olp_product_details?_encoding=UTF8&me=
These exist
Franklin DMQ221 Collins English Dictionary with Thesaurus https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00A0O85TE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_bbrYCb8WAGV7M
https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Franklin-Collins-English-Dictionary-Thesaurus/dp/B00A0O85TE/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=dictionary+electronic&qid=1568996116&sr=8-5
Something like that?
I'm not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for, but the T-33 Russian English Electronic Dictionary Text Translator has decent reviews on Amazon and looks pretty cool.
https://www.amazon.com/Russian-English-Electronic-Dictionary-Translator/dp/B0092G2SKI
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Amazon-Kindle-Paperwhite-Leather-Generation/dp/B008BQH1NO
http://www.amazon.com/Super-Digital-Electronic-Pocket-Scale/dp/B006G66ZF6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345568919&sr=8-1&keywords=electronic+scale+.01g
that exists
http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiReader
Yeah, that's an OK one. /r/Collapse is bigger though, about 20k members. 2 MUST HAVE resources are CD3WD & The AT Library. CD3WD contains some of the AT Library and resources like Appropedia (which you can't get a dump of otherwise in html, though the XML dump for is here: http://www.appropedia.org/approbackups/ ) as well as other resources. The Appropedia (and any other MediaWiki wiki) backup can be used with WikiTaxi for viewing offline.
Main CD3WD Site: http://www.cd3wd.com
Download it: (24GB) http://www.cd3wd.com/cd3wd/index.html
Browse it: http://cd3wd.com/cd3wd_40/cd3wd/index.htm
http://www.wikitaxi.org/delphi/doku.php/products/wikitaxi/index
You just need to download 7zip, ungunzip (gz) the xml file, the bzip2 the file (like zipping or rar'ing) then import it into WikiTaxi with the Windows WikiTaxiImporter.exe GUI. It's cake. Some wikis, like Appropedia don't start out on the right page. For that wiki specifically search for "Category" in the search box up to be taken to the index. For others, search for main, index or category until you find the right one.
There's probably 5+ great wikis out there you can get dumps for, including wikipedia. WikiTaxi can handle more than one wiki too. So once you import Appropedia, WikiPedia, etc you can choose which one you'd like to access from WikiTaxi's startup page.
Also, for things like http://practicalaction.org/hydraulic-ram-pumps
where Appropedia has sourced some of it's material ... or great forums (though both practicalaction.org and forums and other websites won't love you for this) you can use HTTrack to download entire websites of any kind for offline viewing.
Make sure you See options/spider/spider: robots.txt and set it to -> 'never' so if they have a robots.txt that tells Google or something not to grab their pages that you do. :) Poor Netiquette? Maybe. Survival skill? Definitely.
There's an offline WikiPedia handheld viewer that runs off of AA batteries that I'm getting.
For jailbroken Ipods/Iphones: http://www.haukap.com/wiki2touch/
Cheapest w/ touch screen standalone that runs on AAA batteries:
http://www1.macys.com/shop/product/pandigital-panreader01-wikipedia-reader-portable?ID=466909&cm_mmc=Google_Feed_pla_pe-_-adtype-pla-_-target-19586772875-_-kw-&gclid=CPCwntj_3KwCFeZeTAodo23EAQ
Same unit, $100 from amazon.
http://thewikireader.com/store/
Wiktionary, Wikiquotes and Wikitravel are also offered. This means you can adapt any wiki to work with it. It uses microSD memory cards.
http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-WR-01-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1322628107&sr=8-2
Personally, I have a Kindle Keyboard w/3G.
Then, my Android phone with Moon+ Reader, Adobe Reader and a 32GB card.
After that, my laptop and netbook, external BluRay reader & 2x external 500GB USB-powered hard drive with exact same contents (I've had so many drive failures it's ridiculous).
For Power: Crank charger for USB Devices, solar power for USB devices, solar chargers for batteries, battery adapter to USB (cellular emergency chargers). Some of my chargers do more than one.
So, all my videos, CD3WD, e-books and much, much, much more.
I have one of these. When I heard about it, I had to have it- The concept makes me happy.
It's the closest we've come to the Hitchhiker's Guide.
Easiest is just buy a reader: truly a hitchhikers guide in your pocket.
Here are the wikipedia dumps if you just want to download them to your machine.
I'm guessing you're not a programmer so here's a tool that will just go get pages, called wget. You can get it for most platforms. Look at the recursion options and limit the depth to a very small number like 3 or 4 maybe, or else you'll be retrieving the whole wiki.
Also a great addition: A stand alone wikipedia reader that runs on standard batteries.
Like this one: http://www.amazon.com/WikiReader-PANREADER-Pocket-Wikipedia/dp/B002N5521W
They sometimes can be found for a few bucks on eBay.
For a while, there was a device that ran about $25 that had all of the text (no images) of Wikipedia:
http://amazon.com/dp/B002N5521W/
Not quite the same, but it shows just how small the (compressed) text really is.
Books. Maps. CB radios and soon to be Ham radios. I have a Shortwave radio.
I have a buncha of old navy course books from when I was in.
I have about $500 in cash locked away.
I actually also own this.