computer science

Linguee

Linguee is a computer science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Linguee rather than just read about it. In short: Linguee is an online bilingual concordance that provides an online dictionary for a number of language pairs, including many bilingual sentence pairs. As a translation aid, Linguee differs from machine translation services like Babel Fish, and is more similar in function to a translation memory.

Key takeaways

Linguee belongs to computer science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Linguee to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Linguee from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Linguee is an online bilingual concordance that provides an online dictionary for a number of language pairs, including many bilingual sentence pairs. As a translation aid, Linguee differs from machine translation services like Babel Fish, and is more similar in function to a translation memory. Linguee is operated by Cologne-based DeepL SE (formerly DeepL GmbH and Linguee GmbH), which was established in Cologne in December 2008.

Technology Linguee uses specialized webcrawlers to search the Internet for appropriate bilingual texts and to divide them into parallel sentences. The paired sentences identified undergo automatic quality evaluation by a human-trained machine learning algorithm that estimates the quality of translation. The user can set the number of pairs using a fuzzy search, access, and the ranking of search results with the previous quality assurance and compliance is influenced by the search term. Users can also rate translations manually, so that the machine learning system is trained continuously.

Sources In addition to serving the bilingual Web, Patent translated texts as well as the EU Parliament protocols and laws of the European Union (EUR-Lex) as sources. In addition to officially translated text from EU sources, its French language service relies on translated texts from Canadian government documents, websites, and transcripts, along with Canadian national institutions and organisations which often provide bilingual services. According to the operator Linguee offers access to approximately 100 million translations.

History Linguee pioneered the online bilingual concordance. The concept behind it was conceived in the fall of 2007 by former Google employee Gereon Frahling and developed in the following year along with Leonard Fink. The business idea was recognized in 2008 with the main prize of a competition founded by the German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology. In April 2009, the web service was made available to the public. Linguee is operated by DeepL SE (formerly DeepL GmbH and Linguee GmbH) based in Cologne. In 2017, a team of Linguee employees around Jarosław Kutyłowski developed and launched the DeepL Translator, a freely-available translation service capable of translating to and from seven major European languages. Since then, DeepL was gradually expanded to offer 24 languages and 552 language pairs. With increasing focus on Kutyłowski's product (DeepL), Frahling decided in 2019 to leave the company. Kutyłowski restructured the company into the Societas Europaea DeepL SE in 2021.

See also Neural machine translation Parallel text Translation memory

References

Bibliography Katsnelson, Alla (August 29, 2022). "Poor English skills? New AIs help researchers to write better". Nature. 609 (7925): 208–209. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-02767-9. PMID 36038730. S2CID 251931306.

External links Official website

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Linguee

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Linguee claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In computer science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Linguee before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Linguee ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Linguee

In research: Linguee appears in computer science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Linguee in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Linguee is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Computer-assisted translation, Natural language processing software, Translation databases, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Linguee outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

Ask Teacher Smith questions about this articleOpens your AI tutor with a question about “Linguee” →

Affiliate

Preply — study more efficiently by working with a personal tutor. 50% off.

How to study Linguee in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Linguee means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Linguee out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Linguee in simple terms?

Why does Linguee matter?

Because it connects several computer science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Linguee?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Linguee.