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. The site has grown gradually ever since to become one of the most-used online dictionaries, and the top online dictionary for its language pairs of English-Spanish, English-French, English-Italian, Spanish-French, and Spanish-Portuguese. Today, I am happy to continue working on improving the dictionaries, its tools and the language forums. I really do enjoy creating new features to make the site more and more useful."

= From print versions

The first online language dictionaries stemmed from print versions, with websites launched in the mid-1990s.

On the website "Merriam-Webster Online: The Language Center", Merriam- Webster, a main publisher of English-language dictionaries, gave free access to online resources stemming from its print publications. The online resources were: Webster Dictionary, Webster Thesaurus, Webster's Third (a lexical landmark), Guide to International Business Communications, Vocabulary Builder (with interactive vocabulary quizzes), and the Barnhart Dictionary Companion (hot new words). The goal was also to help track down definitions, spellings, pronunciations, synonyms, vocabulary exercises, and other key facts about words and language.

The "Dictionnaire Francophone en Ligne" was the web version of the "Dictionnaire Universel Francophone", published by Hachette, a major French publisher, and the University Agency for Francophony (AUF: Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, also known as AUPELF-UREF). The dictionary included not only standard French but also the French- language words and expressions used worldwide. French is the official language of 49 states, with a number of them in Africa, and is spoken by 500 million people worldwide. The Agency of French-speaking Countries (Agence de la Francophonie), which has included the AUF, was founded in 1970 as an instrument of multilateral cooperation at the international level. As a side remark, English and French are the only official and/or cultural languages that are widely spread on five continents.

= Directories of dictionaries

Directories of dictionaries have been useful too, such as "Dictionnaires Électroniques" (Electronic Dictionaries), an online catalog of electronic dictionaries maintained by the French Section of the Swiss Federal Administration's Central Linguistic Services (SLC-f: Section Française des Services Linguistiques Centraux). The catalog included five main sections: abbreviations and acronyms, monolingual dictionaries, bilingual dictionaries, multilingual dictionaries, and geographical information. The catalog could also be searched by keywords.

Marcel Grangier was the head of the French Section of Central Linguistic Services, which means he was in charge of organizing translation matters into French for the linguistic services of the Swiss government. He wrote in January 1999: "Our website was first conceived as an intranet service for translators in Switzerland, who often deal with the same kind of material as the Federal government's translators. Some parts of it are useful to any translators, wherever they are. The section "Dictionnaires Électroniques" is only one section of the website. Other sections deal with administration, law, the French language, and general information. The site also hosts the pages of the Conference of Translation Services of European States (COTSOES). (…) To work without the internet is simply impossible now. Apart from all the tools used (email, the electronic press, services for translators), the internet is for us a vital and endless source of information in what I'd call the 'non-structured sector' of the web. For example, when the answer to a translation problem can't be found on websites presenting information in an organized way, in most cases search engines allow us to find the missing link somewhere on the network."

How about the future? "We can see multilingualism on the internet as a happy and irreversible inevitability. So we have to laugh at the doomsayers who only complain about the supremacy of English. Such supremacy isn't wrong in itself, because it is mainly based on statistics (more PCs per inhabitant, more people speaking English, etc.). The answer isn't to 'fight English', much less whine about it, but to build more sites in other languages. As a translation service, we also recommend that websites be multilingual. (…) The increasing number of languages on the internet is inevitable and can only boost multicultural exchanges. For this to happen in the best possible circumstances, we still need to develop tools to improve compatibility. Fully coping with accents and other characters is only one example of what can be done."

The section "Dictionnaires Électroniques" was later transfered on the website of the Conference of Translation Services of European States (COTSOES), when COTSOES launched its own website.

= The yourDictionary.com portal

Robert Beard, a language teacher at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, created the website "A Web of Online Dictionaries" (WOD) in 1995. In September 1998, the website provided an index of 800 online dictionaries in 150 languages, as well as specific sections: multilingual dictionaries, specialized English dictionaries, thesauri and other vocabulary aids, language identifiers and guessers, an index of dictionary indices, the Web of Online Grammars, and the Web of Linguistic Fun (i.e. linguistics for non-specialists).

Robert Beard wrote in September 1998: "There was an initial fear that the web posed a threat to multilingualism on the web, since HTML and other programming languages are based on English and since there are simply