TIP of the day: Search foreign languages - French, German, Spanish ...

Someone using a non-English UI may wish to modify/add to this post as appropriate.

1. One can limit the search to a particular language by using a search argument in the form of "language colon word". Note that the behavior of "match all forms" will vary.

2. When the language is transliterated, Logos does not tag with the language but with transliterated. This is abbreviated to translit in the search argument.

3. One can get more complete results for a search by searching both for the original language and the transliteration.

4. If your library is multilingual (mine is not a good example), you can broaden searches to include multiple language resources in a single search. Note the increase in hits.

What languages can be searched?

... for all languages "X" that Logos supports (which is basically any that have an ISO-639 language code).

How accurate is the coding?

All text in a Logos resource is tagged with its language, so all resources are coded for (foreign) languages.

To clarify: "[In theory, a]ll text in a Logos resource is tagged with its language, so all resources are [supposed to be] coded for (foreign) languages."

Foreign language strings will generally not be tagged unless they're set in italic typeface in the book, which is a (weak) indication that the author considered the word or phrase to be foreign. So, for example, if an author italicizes "Weltanschauung" it will probably be tagged as German; if the author casually uses it in plain text without calling it out, then maybe/probably not. These days, words like "zeitgeist" and "schadenfreude" show up in my English spell-checker by default, but books of older eras called them out as foreign.

Book titles and abbreviations are an especially gray area case, and I suspect the editorial policies over the many years have been neither 100% consistent nor applied 100% consistently. We've also corresponded before about whether or not a Latin phrase in common usage (such as "e.g." or "per se") or technical terminology (such as biological nomenclature) has crossed the language barrier.

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Comments

Rosie Perera

An addition to this tip, for searching in biblical languages: If you're not adept at entering words in a biblical language or want a quick & dirty way to enter them without having to bring up a Greek or Hebrew keyboard, you can enter them using what they sound like (transliterated) in English.

For example, let's say you're trying to enter the word λόγος to search for it.

In the search box, you can type g:logos (the g: prefix is for Greek).

Logos will propose Greek words that match that transliteration at the beginning of them:

Just select the one you want, and Logos will fill it in to the search box:

This trick works for Hebrew too, using h: for the prefix.

It also works for Aramaic (use a:). I don't know any Aramaic, but I do know some Aramaic transliterations: e.g., "Eloi! Eloi! Lama sabachthani" ("My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?") And "Talitha koum!" ("Little girl, get up!") So let's try talitha:

NOTE: Make sure you do not have a space between the language prefix and the word or the prefix will be ignored:

For more information, see https://wiki.logos.com/detailed_search_help#Searching_in_Greek_and_Hebrew

MJ. Smith

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/737103#Comment_737103

Thanks Rosie, good addition.

delete12066188

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/737109#Comment_737109

you also just can write in the Word you looking for. If you have a Collection for a special time you could also search just in this Time Range.