Even as a non-american, with a non-English native language, Logos is one of the most important resources I have at my disposal for sermon preparation and personal bible study. It is not the only tool, neither would I be lost without it, but it is very, very helpful. My English skills are not so bad, and yet I often find it difficult to translate thoughts to the language I am working with (which is usually Norwegian). I am quite confident that a lot of people find it even harder than I do. In fact, during my seminary days, many of my co-students started whining every time we were supposed to read a book in English. And this was less than a decade ago.
Websters dictionary often helps when I simply do not know what a term means, and I am guessing this could be true for native English speakers as well. Sadly this is often not enough, because the problem is usually not that I do not understand. Rather it is that I lack a corresponding term in my language. There are of course more than one solution to this problem. I could look up the term in a printed or online dictionary, made for this purpose. Of course it would cost me the convenience of Logos, but it is not a big problem. What makes this more difficult is that the term I am looking for is often theological in nature, and therefore not included in popular dictionaries. Some times Wikipedia can be of help in this case. What I do is to look up the term on English Wikipedia, and then use the language selector to find the corresponding article in my language. Even though I may not read the article, I have received the term. This method works surprisingly often. In fact, one could wonder if it is possible to make up a standard list of theological terms and then use a script to create a dictionary just by searching Wikipedia. After all, the text on Wikipedia is CC-licensed.
Now, as to the reason I am writing this: I am not really suggesting a specific solution, but rather asking for a discussion on how foreigners like myself could be helped over the language barrier. Amazon Kindle has taken one step by supplying several foreign language dictionaries with every device. Having a theological dictionary in my language on Logos would be great, but given the fact even publishing the Norwegian bible in Logos seems to take several years, a dictionary might be fairly distant.
I assume that the Norwegian user base is not really big enough to be considered a priority, and that it might even be expendable if it should, for some reason, come to that. Same might be the case for other countries as well. I certainly hope not, but I have, of course, no insight into Logos's marketing strategies, or legal decisions. On the other hand, such an assumption might guide one to a better idea, because then one is forced to consider a bigger piece of the cake (so to speak).
Perhaps a Wikipedia-plugin might be an interesting step. For example, if you right click a theological term, the context-sensitive menu could include a tab called "Wikipedia". Click this tab, and what you get is the article introduction in a preset language.
