Lingoes is a single-click multi-lingual translation software program released as a freeware

Freeware

Freeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...

 translation utility. Lingoes is often compared to Babylon

Babylon (program)

Babylon is a computer dictionary and translation program for Microsoft Windows, developed by Babylon Ltd., an Israeli public company .-History:...

 dictionary due to similarities in the GUI

Gui

Gui or guee is a generic term to refer to grilled dishes in Korean cuisine. These most commonly have meat or fish as their primary ingredient, but may in some cases also comprise grilled vegetables or other vegetarian ingredients. The term derives from the verb, "gupda" in Korean, which literally...

, same functionalities and most importantly being free of charge.

Features and Expandability

Lingoes has the ability to add new dictionaries and encyclopedias to widen its usability. Online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its 20 million articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world. Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site,...

, and Baidu Baike

Baidu Baike

Baidu Encyclopedia is a Chinese language collaborative Web-based encyclopedia provided by the Chinese search engine Baidu. Like Baidu itself, the encyclopedia is heavily self-censored in line with government regulations....

as well as leading dictionaries like Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, WordNet

WordNet

WordNet is a lexical database for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms called synsets, provides short, general definitions, and records the various semantic relations between these synonym sets...

, MacMillan English Dictionary,Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner's English Dictionary and many other cross-English dictionaries i.e. Arabic, Armenian, Dutch, French, German, GreeK, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish (more over 80 languages as stated in Lingoes' official website).

Additional tools, termed as appendices in the program, include a currency converter, weights and measure units converter, international time zones converter, plus the periodic table of elements, a scientific calculator, Traditional Chinese & Simplified Chinese conversion utility, Base64 encode / decode utility, (MD4

MD4

The MD4 Message-Digest Algorithm is a cryptographic hash function developed by Ronald Rivest in 1990. The digest length is 128 bits. The algorithm has influenced later designs, such as the MD5, SHA-1 and RIPEMD algorithms....

, MD5

MD5

The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is a widely used cryptographic hash function that produces a 128-bit hash value. Specified in RFC 1321, MD5 has been employed in a wide variety of security applications, and is also commonly used to check data integrity...

 and SHA-1 algorithms) and many other tools that can be added through the website.

The program has the ability to pronounce words and install additional text-to-speech engines available for download also through Lingoes' website.

Lingoes also offers a whole-text translation ability using online translation service providers like Google Translation, Yahoo! Babel Fish Translation

Babel Fish (website)

Yahoo! Babel Fish is a web-based machine translation application on Yahoo! that translates text or web pages from one of several languages into another....

, SYSTRAN

SYSTRAN

SYSTRAN, founded by Dr. Peter Toma in 1968, is one of the oldest machine translation companies. SYSTRAN has done extensive work for the United States Department of Defense and the European Commission....

, Cross Language, Click2Translate and others.
Lingoes also, offers various ways to translate a text, for examples, via a mouse-over, or by Double clicking the selected text, options not available with Babylon pro.

Criticism

• The typical similarity of Lingoes to Babylon
  Babylon (program)
  Babylon is a computer dictionary and translation program for Microsoft Windows, developed by Babylon Ltd., an Israeli public company .-History:...
  
   has been viewed, by some, as lack of innovation for a new translation software.
• The use of dictionary brand names like Oxford's, Longman's, Cambridge's, Merriam-Webster's, Collin's and others without any reference in Lingoes' website to the legitimacy of this use is suspicious of an illegal act.
• Intended platform limitation to Windows can be viewed as a similar Babylon step to a migration from a freeware to a payware program.
• Lingoes lacks the ability for auto-correction of misspelled words or offering suggestions.

See also

• Comparison of machine translation applications
  Comparison of machine translation applications
  A machine translation application is a program which can translate text or speech from one natural language to another. Machine translation applications are essential to the modern language industry...
  
  
• QwickUp (alternative online service)