PC Lingua Version 2

From linguistic software developer Charles Hugo comes word that version 2 of pc Lingua is now shipping. PC-Lingua is a two- way English-German electronic dictionary for PC/compatibles based on Harrap’s German-English paper dictionary and published in Germany by m&t. The most noteworthy feature of the new release is morphology reduction in the lookup routine. Whereas in version 1 of PC-Lingua, ausgeführt would have returned ausgeben, the closest literal entry, the new version properly returns the entry ausführen.” It’s not a dictionary-based morphologizer,” says In-Depth Software’s Hugo. “Unfortunately, Harrap’s parts of speech tags are not in separate fields. Rather, I have a table of rules for both English and German which I apply to the input string.” Other improvements include a facility for searching within entries helpful for long entries like that for the word set. In addition, M&T have merged a large collection of financial terms into the main dictionary.
    The package now includes a utility program for importing and exporting comma-delimited files (CDV) and ASCII files to and from user dictionaries. PC-Lingua’s user dictionary function remains one of the program’s finest features; the active user dictionary is automatically searched sequentially with the main dictionary. PC-Lingua has been well- received in Germany, with positive reviews in the mainstream computer press. Hugo is now working on the obligatory Windows version; he is also investigating the possibility of producing additional bilingual dictionaries in the PC-Lingua format. Hugo’s memory-resident lookup software is compact and elegantly-designed; it would be good to see other dictionaries available for it. Price: DM299.

M&T Software Partner International Hans-Pinsel Str 9B, Haar 8013, Germany; Tel +49 89 46 09000, Fax +49 89 46 090098

In-Depth Software, Derde Helmersstraat 90-3, 1054 BM Amsterdam, the Netherlands; Tel +31 20 6854778, Fax +31 20 6892258