German Dictionary: How much interest?

Although there are some work-around solutions, it would be handy to have an English-German dictionary in Logos. Heath's dictionary has been lingering in community pricing forever. Not sure people why, perhaps because it is older and the print pages show old rather modern German script?

In any case, one can buy an English-German dictionary (Oxford, Collins, etc.) for fairly cheap these days. Would it be difficult and expensive for FL to feature one of these?

If FL wants to make a mark with academics, this is the sort of content that can score points.

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Lew Worthington

I'd purchase a good modern volume like that.

Beloved Amodeo

If FL wants to make a mark with academics, this is the sort of content that can score points.

Agree! [Y]

Jordan Litchfield

I would definitely be interested...

Steve Maling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044823#Comment_1044823

Yes, please! This has been asked for for many years. I think somewhere in the Fora (plural of forum) Phil Gons posted that the need has been considered.

Steve Maling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044826#Comment_1044826

Here is a link:

Phil Gons (Faithlife) | Forum Activity | Replied: Thu, Feb 4 2010 5:20 PM

Russ Quinn:

Of course, the ideal would be to have Oxford-Duden but it is not public domain.

That one's on the list, but until we can get it, perhaps a public domain dictionary would be sufficient. Anything is better than our current offerings.

NB.Mick

it would be handy to have an English-German dictionary in Logos. Heath's dictionary has been lingering in community pricing forever.

Maybe some more bids are needed: https://www.logos.com/product/55071/heaths-german-and-english-dictionary

Roy

I don't know if it is any good but there is this already in LOGOS.

https://www.logos.com/product/33539/modern-theological-german-a-reader-and-dictionary

Ben

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044885#Comment_1044885

I would love a good German dictionary. Harper-Collins Unabridged

SineNomine

Perhaps a post in the German forum may find still more interest.

Glenn Crouch

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044888#Comment_1044888

I would love a good German dictionary. Harper-Collins Unabridged

[Y]

Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044888#Comment_1044888

I agree that we probably need a more recent offering than Heath rather than try to push that one forward. Roy, the Theological Reader dictionary is companion to the Reader for which it provides vocabulary, it is not a all-around dictionary.

NB.Mick

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044913#Comment_1044913

the Theological Reader dictionary is companion to the Reader for which it provides vocabulary, it is not a all-around dictionary.

While you are right in that the German Theological Reader dictionary is not all-around or exhaustive, it seems to contain the complete vocabulary of the Luther bible in addition to theological technical terms, so it goes a much longer way than just providing vocabulary for the Reader volume.

I personally see Heath as an all-around dictionary (going into the direction of exhaustive) - and the fact that it is a hundred years old may be a benefit more then an issue, given the content of our libraries where the majority of works in both English and German are that old and the remainder will most often be authored with a conservative use of language. If somebody really has to look up neologisms like "to tinder" in a modern work, they will find http://lmgtfy.com/ to be their friend. So, in my understanding, Heath' age is not really an issue for the use of Logos. Or, put the other way round, if Faithlife can't raise enough sales volume to produce a PD work, it may be economically impossible to license a contemporary dictionary. I think I remember FL's Thomas Reiter writing something in this direction in the German-language subforum recently.

I think, what really would be needed to help English-speaking readers to look up words in a German-language text was an analytical lexicon (like we have for Greek and Latin), which links the lemma and shows the grammatical form from a word in all its morphological varieties. There are databases that provide this information, and they could easily be linked back to a dictionary that is in the PD or where FL owns all rights for. But maybe wiktionary or other more recent free sources might come in as well, if FL wants to produce such a thing.

Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044919#Comment_1044919

Thanks Mick, for your thoughts and the correction of the info concerning the Theological Dictionary.

I would think that the primary use of a German-English dictionary would be:

Reading older German works such such as Gunkel, Von Rad, etc. An older dictionary could offer a better reflection of idioms that were in use then.
Reading more recent pieces of German scholarship and popular Christian living, commentaries, etc. Here more recent spelling and idioms could be helpful.

I seem to recall that some bilingual dictionaries had both directions (two separate sections). I have no doubt that the many German users of Logos would love to be able to interact with the far more numerous resources available in English in Logos.

I think that parsing, analytical would be useful but we must careful not to ask too much and make the project even less possible than it already is.

As for Heath, the print edition uses one of those nasty gothic fonts that Germans were fond of in the old days but which are visually awful. It would be good to know whether FL would plan to keep this font or use something that is less of a turn-off.

You may be right that Heath may still be our best shot. Perhaps Reiter and others could speak to this (unless you feel they already have sufficiently in the other posts you allude to)?

Thomas Reiter (Faithlife)

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1044921#Comment_1044921

I have been summoned? [;)]

Mick has supplied a great summary of where we are currently at on the German side and what our thinking is, but I can expand a bit further.

Dictionaries like this are rather expensive to produce and expensive to license, which would significantly increase the cost that would have to be raised if we were to license something like the Oxford or Langenscheidt dictionaries. If you couple that with the reasons outlined by Mick above, we do believe that Heath's can represent more than just a viable option, although we admit that there may be some initial concern due to the age that has to be overcome if one hasn't interacted with the material.

We actually recently revisited this project and were able to reduce the production cost by a decent amount and are still working on potentially reducing costs even further (without compromising quality), which can hopefully help move this further towards completion.

In regards to your other questions:

Heath's actually is a bilingual dictionary as well, which is part of the reason as to why we consider it a great starting point.
We would of course update the fraktur for a more readable font

You can find some more conversation around this topic here in the German forum - https://community.logos.com/forums/t/176891.aspx (The fact that most of you can at least mostly follow the conversation with the simple click of a button in your browser is part of the value issue of making a large investment into this resource).

I am interested though in how beneficial you think this would be for you. As of today, we have decided to invest our pre-funding resources somewhere else, but I am open to changing my mind if we think there is enough interest around this project.

Steve Maling

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1045067#Comment_1045067

#1) Thomas' post encouraged me to bid again on Heath. (Some time back I had gotten tired of waiting and cancelled my bid.) One reason is Thomas' assurance, "We would of course update the Fraktur for a more readable font."

#2) Sometimes double clicking on a German word in the iPad app will bring up an English definition if you have checked the German Dictionary included in the iPad "Settingss". I say "sometimes" because this hasn't worked for me with some resources. But on the whole, this is a work around if you can tear yourself away from your laptop/desktop application for a bit.

#3) So, in the third place, because I hate to leave my laptop and because I crave dependable results, I really do hope FL will move Heath into production ASAP!

Francis

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1045073#Comment_1045073

Thank you, Thomas, for your reply and helpful explanations. Hopefully, this can get going. Great to hear the dictionary is bilingual. Perhaps we can get German users behind the project as well! I'm afraid that my German is not good enough to create a thread to that effect, but am sure someone like you, Sasha, or others could do it if you're up to it.

SineNomine

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1045067#Comment_1045067

We would of course update the fraktur for a more readable font

Perhaps it could be helpful to indicate that somewhere on the product page.

DMB

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1045067#Comment_1045067

I am interested though in how beneficial you think this would be for you. As of today, we have decided to invest our pre-funding resources somewhere else, but I am open to changing my mind if we think there is enough interest around this project.

I suspect Logos long-term can't afford translating major works ... they're been several translating prepubs out there, but the cost demands a sizable market. Spicq/Hebrews quickly comes to mind.

A german dictionary would be helpful as discussed above, for german works, and allow more Logos coverage.

As an example, Strack/Billerbeck went on prepub 2013 ... it's not going to happen, though often referenced:

https://www.logos.com/product/30801/commentary-on-the-new-testament-from-the-talmud-and-midrash

I got the german version, and happily have it linked using a CitedBy for both direct, and referenced comments. But the german is sometimes a struggle. A right-click would sure be nice.