Lithuanian language resources online

A non-portable reference library.

The recent article on Nežinau about the new release of the translation software package Tildės biuro 2009 coincides with a recent task I’ve undertaken. Part of applying for Lithuanian citizenship involves translating non-Lithuanian documents into Lithuanian. I could pay someone to do that, of course, but the consul lets people who are comfortable with both languages to provide their own translations. I’m comfortable with Lithuanian, but not used to translating legal documents, so I’ve renewed my search for good resources online.

If anyone has any to add to my list, please make use of the comments field to do so!

1. Lithuanian-Lithuanian Dictionaries

For the past several years, I’ve abused the online version of the Dabartinis lietuvių kalbos žodynas available from Autoinfa. The problem is that the Autoinfa page simply cannot render Lithuanian letters with stress marks correctly (on my Mac), and to get it to work on Windows, you have to run a separate program that installs fonts or something idiotic like that. That kind of stuff is an affront to good-computing practices worldwide in this era of Unicode.

DLKŽ vs. LKŽ. (click to enlarge)

In steps in lkz.lt, which hosts the much larger Lietuvių kalbos žodynas, also edited by Lietuvių kalbos institutas. Simply put, not only is the dictionary larger, but the online implementation is far better, namely in that letters are rendered correctly. But the LKŽ also groups words together by root, so you can see how different prefices change meanings (something that is especially useful for a language like Lithuanian, which is so dependent on prefixed verbs). I’ve cobbled together a comparison of the two different dictionaries here (click on image to enlarge), and it’s obvious which is the pick to click.

If I had to think of English equivalents, I’d say that the DLKŽ is more like going to m-w.com to look up a definition, but going to the LKŽ is more like hitting the OED. Naturally, I hit the OED about 95% of the time, so I know where I’ll be focusing my attention. Luckily, the LKŽ, unlike the OED, is free. I’m not sure the LKŽ goes as historically deep as the OED does. That sort of historical dictionary of Lithuanian has been the pipedream of philologists for over a century now, and no one has tackled the immense job, as far as I know.

Additionally, the LKI features links to several Lithuanian technical lexicons for more specific work.

2. Lithuanian <> English Dictionaries

lietuviu-anglu.com vs. Anglonas. (click to enlarge)

If you don’t feel like dropping 440Lt for Tildės biuro 2009, there’s a few other options.

Sadly, however, it seems that anglu-lietuviu.com and lietuviu-anglu.com are the only online options for two-way translation. I think that the two sites are generally ok, but they’ve let me down when my requests have gotten more esoteric. They also give next to no usage guidelines. That seems to be the alpha and the omega of the matter. Alternatively, if you have a Windows computer (or are running a virtual Windows machine, like me), you can buy the program Anglonas from Fotonija.  It has a two-way dictionary of over 110,000 terms on either side.

Anglonas is expensive (100Lt), and I’m not sure how available it is outside of Lithuania, but if you want to see the difference between free (the web) and pay (Anglonas), I’ve put together a little screenshot of both. Fotonija also offers other dictionaries, but they are so expensive that I haven’t been tempted to mess around with them.

Given this dearth of options, I often, honestly, end up using Wikipedia for basic translation of nouns of things I never learned in Lithuanian. I look up something in English, then click on the Lithuanian translation of the page.

Of course, there’s also Google’s translator, but I’ve never used it, and, well, I’m afraid to.

3. Slang dictionaries

As far as I know, the only one of these in Lithuanian is the “Jaunimo kalbos žodynas” at kriu.lt. It’s occasionally useful, often useless, but always amusing. It’s the LT version of urbandictionary.com. To the words here, I add in choice words from the “Русско-английский словарь мата,” which has expanded to far more than just a lexicon of profanity. They recently started even tracking internet slang and have a tool that turns normal Russian into “Olbanian.”

4. Grammar

Ha ha ha ha ha.

As far as I know, no declension / conjugation paradigms are available online. Maybe someday I’ll copy some from a book and throw them online. There are guides regarding when to use which cases, and such, but nothing of a more quick-reference nature.

5. Onomastics

There is a totally unsourced names dictionary, “Vardų reikškmės” over at day.lt, which corresponds rather well with my paper copy of Lietuvių vardų kilmės žodynas.

6. More?

Lithuanian, like Castillian and French, has a national office charged with maintaining linguistic prescription. The Valstybinė lietuvių kalbos komisija even has a webpage dedicated to the most common errors made in Lithuanian, so enjoy.

I’m pretty sad at how short a list this is, so I’m hoping maybe readers will come up with more.

Technorati Tags: Castillian, french, grammar, language, lexicon, nežinau.lt, russian, slang, Tildė

Tags: Castillian, french, grammar, language, lexicon, nežinau.lt, russian, slang, Tildė