languages

Rainlendar Lite offers not only a fantastic desktop calendar, but also a helpful reminder system. With a familiar layout and useful tools, this program is certain to keep you organized.

The program's interface is simple with intuitive commands. We had no problem finding and navigating this semitranslucent calendar and a to-do list as it nestled into our desktop. Programming the alarm and task lists felt like operating Microsoft Outlook, because the menus mimic that program. With only a few mouse clicks and some times and dates we had our calendar full of reminders. We like how the reminders are … Read more

So just how do you say "poke" in Latin? It's "puncti," according to Facebook's newest language translation. The supposedly "dead" language--O.K., so the Others on "Lost" speak it sometimes--debuted as an official translation on the social network on Friday.

"Latin has joined the more than 70 languages we've made available on the site in the past two years, including some which have launched just today--Azeri, Faroese, Georgian and Nepali," a post on the company blog by Facebook's Elizabeth Linder read. "Some of these … Read more

As its name suggests, this program counts and ranks word frequencies in text files. The interface would have benefited from a splash of color and more eye-catching design, but the program performed as promised.

Hermetic Word Frequency Counter opens with an extremely plain interface. The main window was fairly straightforward. We loaded our text file using the program's browsing capability. Clicking the Set Parameters button opened a separate window that, at first glance, was pretty cluttered. But once our eyes adjusted, we were able to find our way around the interface. Here, you can select what words and characters … Read more

MLEditor Standard Edition lets users read and edit text files in a language code other than their operating system's native language code. It is a multilanguage text editor, word processing, and code-conversion tool that also specializes in professional-quality conversions between Simplified and Traditional Chinese. It will work with all the languages supported by Microsoft Windows, including Japanese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Thai, and many others. It supports conversions between Unicode, Unicode BE, ANSI, and UTC-8. The word processor includes several unique features, such as dual-area Control Editing, Batch Replace, a text file previewer, desktop sticky notes, … Read more

Google on Monday announced that it had added nine new languages to its Translate service.

Included in the update (which actually went live early last week) are Afrikaans, Belarusian, Icelandic, Irish, Macedonian, Malay, Swahili, Welsh, and Yiddish. This brings the total number of languages the service is able to translate to 51.

Like other Google Translate updates, these changes will eventually go out to other services where the machine translation is used, including Google Friend Connect, Google Talk, Gmail, and most recently Google Docs. However, the new languages have not shown up on any of those services just yet.

In … Read more

As children, many of us had fun with Mad Libs. You remember these; the game asks for a set of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and other parts of speech, which are then inserted into a story with hilarious results. StoryMaker operates on the same basic premise, and is just as much fun.

The program's interface is rather unattractive, but it is simple and can be easily navigated by kids. There are large buttons for the program's four main functions. The first button let users play the game. The program asks for words in various parts of speech, and at … Read more

Voca is a versatile program that lets users practice their vocabulary in any language, provided they can come up with a list of vocabulary words.

The program's interface is sleek and attractive, but it's not immediately obvious how a user should get started. A visit to the online Help file reveals that users must either create their own list of vocabulary words or visit the publisher's Web site to download a list created by another user. Both options are easy to do, and once the vocabulary list is created or loaded, the program offers a variety of … Read more

WordFinder with Collins English Dictionary & Thesaurus is a comprehensive English-language dictionary and thesaurus. Although users looking for an electronic alternative to traditional hardbound reference books should find that WordFinder meets all their needs, some aspects of the interface can be confusing.

For the most part, the program's interface is intuitive and attractive. As users start to type a word, the dictionary scrolls through its entries alphabetically; this allows users to see surrounding words, much as they would when looking up a word in a hard copy of a dictionary. It's easy to switch between the dictionary and … Read more

WordBanker English-Swedish allows users to practice their Swedish vocabulary using several different formats. Although the program is not the most intuitive we've ever seen, it's fairly easy to use and is a great way to improve your Swedish vocabulary.

The program's interface is not particularly attractive and can sometimes be hard to navigate. Each function opens a separate window within the program, and it's hard to know at first if closing the window is going to take you back to the main menu or close the program completely. Continued use of the program helps with this. … Read more