TranslateIt! will come in handy if you work in English, German or Russian and need to quickly translate between both languages.

The application fits in your launch bar and shows translations for any word in German or English that you hover your arrow over. You can add the word to a database and have it voiced thanks to a little link in the hover window.

TranslateIt! also features a wide range of free dictionaries from which you can quickly look up definitions and translations. Try using the simple yet practical Word Quiz to learn new words quickly. You can also print flash cards to memorize words with. We like the search feature which lets you find definitions and translations for any word in seconds.

Showing translations in a hover window, is a good idea at first, but it can quickly get annoying. We suggest disabling it and having it come up only with a hotkey.

TranslateIt! is a good tool to quickly find translations of words from German to English or Russian.

Download TranslateIt! Deluxe 9.5.9576 in Softonic

A story development tool can be very useful in helping you organize all the pieces of your story. If you're a writer, you'll know it's not always easy to keep track of all your characters, plot, settings and events in your story.

Storyist lets you manage all the pieces of your story, includes a text editor, which lets you format both manuscript and screenplays and a storyboard to get a different perspective on your story. You can highlight sections and add notes and organize every element in many different ways. I quite liked the use of index cards to jot down ideas and tie them together.

You can link in between sections to keep your plot well tied up and add specific elements easily.

I did find that Storyist lacked story templates, as it only actually comes with four very similar ones to start with.

Storyist should give you a complete overview of your story and make sure every element ties up well together.

Download Storyist 1.3.8 in Softonic

dict.cc Dictionary Plug-in will be useful for all users who have to work in or with the German language. It adds a comprehensive German dictionary for offline use to your Mac Leopard glossary tool. After the installation you need to activate your new vocabulary in the preferences of Dictionary.App.

To use the dictionary you can just type a word into the built-in Dictionary application on your Mac. A list of translations will be provided, according to the different possible contexts a word might be used in. The most interesting feature though is the possibility of having this translator while you are working on almost any application or while you are surfing the net. Just right click on the unknown word in any Cocoa application and select 'Dictionary' to be able to view the translated word in English or German. Alternatively, you can hit and hold Ctrl+Command+D and move the mouse cursor over a sentence. The dictionary is also accessible via Spotlight and other core services.

It's a pity that in the descriptions provided, there is neither phonetic guidance, nor examples of how that specific item is used, but on the other hand the dictionary provides hints if you spell a word incorrectly while looking for it.

Dict.cc is a exhaustive English-German dictionary always available with a right click. Though it lacks some features, it should be a useful tool for anyone who wants to work with German on their Mac.

Download dict.cc Dictionary Plugin 2008-05-27 in Softonic

Apple's text to speech utility, VoiceOver, is very handy to listen to any written text on your Mac, yet it feels a little limited. Take GhostReader, which offers a wide choice of languages and voices and can read any text selection.

Although the original download only comes with American English, it offers more than a dozen different voices and even so, GhostReader will let you download new languages immediately from its web site. It's a shame that you only find voices from the American and European continents, still the choice given is pretty wide.

GhostReader comes in a multi-windowed interface, which put me off a bit, yet I found it very easy to playback text, either in the Reader or simply from a selection. This last point is what I really enjoyed from the program. Select any piece of text anywhere and it will play it.

You will be able to save all your texts in iTunes for later use. GhostReader also work perfectly well with hotkeys.

Although I don't enjoy the multi-windowed interface, I believe GhostReader is a great text to speech utility with many voices and simple playback.

Download GhostReader 1.5 in Softonic

This learning game is meant to help you practice your Spanish and is not intended for people trying to learn it from scratch. In fact, you need to understand a little bit of the language in order to answer the questions.

The program provides 49 lessons that you can download by clicking the appropriate link in the main frame. The tests include a study section where you can read many examples on a specific subject and games to practice what you have studied. To import a downloaded file, click the green 'import' arrow icon in the main frame of the application. It would have been nice if this install were automatic, but it's not very complicated anyway.

Practiquemos doesn't feature particular functions to improve your learning and it could have been easily improved from a user-experience point of view. For example when you give the wrong answer or you misspell a word, the application doesn't correct it to show you the right version. This sort of feature, while sounding simple and basic, is actually essential for students.

If you are looking to improve your Spanish, learning new words and ways to use the language, Practiquemos is a free, if somewhat simplistic, teacher.

Download Practiquemos 1.5.5 in Softonic

Aqueiss is a contextual menu plugin that you can use to check the spelling, definition and location of words on the internet conveniently from within any application that supports contextual menus (menus that appear when you control-click with your mouse). But since Aqueiss is now configurable, via a System Preference pane menu editor, you can extend its functionality to include more general applications due to the features outlined below:

• Access any URL conveniently from a contextual menu.
• Group your URL's into any number of (nameable) groups you like.
• Add any URLs that take a single search argument.
• Name the items in your menu as you wish

Download Aqueiss 2.1.7 in Softonic

A desktop program that will help you manage and maintain a list of quotations and insightful ideas. Quotations can be sorted, categorized, imported, exported and viewed at random. iWisdom stores quotations in an XML format, and uses XSL to publish a collection to a set of Web pages.

Download iWisdom 1.41 in Softonic

WordLookup is very effective at searching for translations for specific keywords. The application lets you search any document or application for a keyword and find its translation in any language. We were impressed by the number of languages available and how easy it is to search in one and paste in another. The interface of WordLookup is well structured and , thanks to the little flags, lets you easily identify languages.

Even though the quality of words it comes up can really differ, all in all we appreciate WordLookup because it gives a new twist to translating, by searching data from the internet to find a corresponding word. Since the web is always growing, chances are WordLookup will come up with better words in time. And even if you are not satisfied with the words the program comes up with, you can ask it look for more and let it show you entries closer to your keywords.

Very useful if you work in multiple languages, WordLookup should ensure that you never run out of words in any language.

Download WordLookup 3.23 in Softonic

The idea of ProVoc is quite simple, but efficient: you enter a list of words in two languages, and ProVoc let you repeat them by asking the translation of randomly chosen words...

• Unicode support (e.g. for asiatic, hebraic, arabic or any other alphabet)
• Normal or continuous test
• Multiple choice questions
• Repetition of the words which has not been translated corretly
• Variable difficulty level for the continous test
• Print cards
• Share vocabulary documents
• Words grouped by pages
• Edition and test of several files simultaneously
• Case and accent sensitivity language-dependant
• Accept synonyms as correct answer
• Facultative determinents
• Mark words during edition or testing

Download ProVoc 4.2.2 in Softonic

Hypercontext was designed as a software tool to help with a process known as "hypertexting." When a file is hypertexted, the Tibetan words in the file are connected with the English words that they correspond to. These hypertexted files will then be used to create a Tibetan-English dictionary.

A “contextual dictionary,” in contrast to an ordinary dictionary, shows words in a variety of contexts. Being able to interactively browse multiple contexts at once nicely depicts the grammatical structure of a language, making it an excellent learning and teaching tool. Since the dictionary will be derived from actual translations of ancient Buddhist texts, it will be able to offer deep insights into how a text was translated, and what the text means.

The built-in dictionary that comes with Hypercontext was kindly provided by the Tibetan and Himalayan Digital Library under the terms of the THDL Open Community License. Hypercontext includes from this distribution Jim Valby's entire dictionary, as well as parts of Jeffrey Hopkins' Tibetan-Sanskrit-English Dictionary version 2.0.0.

Download Hypercontext 0.7 in Softonic

Make sure you're spelling and grammar are correct thanks to this nifty application. The program offers the following features:

• Sophisticated error recognition, with extensive suggestions.
• Detection of subtle problems in grammar, syntax, punctuation
• Includes conjugated verb forms, slang, and even technical language.
• Use a single keystroke to activate Grammatica from within other applications.
• Conjugate verbs in every tense!
• Add other language modules -- even add your own entries!
• Ergonomic interface
• Tight integration with Microsoft Word (among others)
• Multilingual interface

Download Ultralingua Grammatica Spelling and Grammar Checker - English 6.2 in Softonic

With this English to Portuguese dictionary, you should quickly improve your language skills. Ultralingua includes the following features:

• Up to 350,000 indexed translations
• Single Click Activation
• Recognize conjugated verbs, plurals, etc.
• Extensive language reference
• Verb conjugator
• Conjugate verbs in every tense!
• Add other language modules -- even create your own entries!
• PowerSearch mode, with wildcards
• Number-to-text converter
• History feature
• Multilingual interface
• Automatic translation of blocks of text (via the Web)
• Search for examples of usage (via the Web)

Download Ultralingua Dictionary English-Portuguese 6.0.2 in Softonic

With this English to German dictionary, you should quickly improve your language skills. Ultralingua includes the following features:

• Up to 350,000 indexed translations
• Single Click Activation
• Recognize conjugated verbs, plurals, etc.
• Extensive language reference
• Verb conjugator
• Conjugate verbs in every tense!
• Add other language modules -- even create your own entries!
• PowerSearch mode, with wildcards
• Number-to-text converter
• History feature
• Multilingual interface
• Automatic translation of blocks of text (via the Web)
• Search for examples of usage (via the Web)

Download Ultralingua Dictionary English-German 6.0.2 in Softonic

With this English to French dictionary, you should quickly improve your language skills. Ultralingua includes the following features:

• Up to 350,000 indexed translations
• Single Click Activation
• Recognize conjugated verbs, plurals, etc.
• Extensive language reference
• Verb conjugator
• Conjugate verbs in every tense!
• Add other language modules -- even create your own entries!
• PowerSearch mode, with wildcards
• Number-to-text converter
• History feature
• Multilingual interface
• Automatic translation of blocks of text (via the Web)
• Search for examples of usage (via the Web)

Download Ultralingua Dictionary English-French 6.0.2 in Softonic

This Ultralingua dictionary includes thousands of colloquial terms and common expressions, complete verb conjugations, the ability to interact with other applications (via a simple click), and much, much more.

• Up to 350,000 indexed translations
• Single Click Activation
• Recognize conjugated verbs, plurals, etc.
• Extensive language reference
• Verb conjugator
• Conjugate verbs in every tense!
• Add other language modules -- even create your own entries!
• PowerSearch mode, with wildcards
• Number-to-text converter
• History feature
• Multilingual interface
• Automatic translation of blocks of text (via the Web)
• Search for examples of usage (via the Web)

Download Ultralingua Dictionary Spanish-English 6.02 in Softonic

Mac OS X comes with built-in spell checking for many applications, but why stop there? Now you can have an integrated thesaurus as well. With Nisus Thesaurus you get a fast electronic thesaurus that automatically integrates with any service aware application including Nisus Writer Express, Mail, TextEdit, Safari, and more.

Using Thesaurus is easy. Just select the word in your favorite application and choose "Nisus Thesaurus" from the "Services" sub-menu. When you select a word in Nisus Thesaurus, the synonyms for that word will be shown right next to it in the Word Browser. Go from "sky" to "cumulonimbus" in just a few clicks.

Nisus Thesaurus knows the English language. Using the WordNet lexical reference database, Thesaurus knows over 120,000 words and how they relate to each other. When you lookup a word in Nisus Thesaurus, it will show you related words in six categories. With its built-in dictionary, Thesaurus knows that sometimes the same word means different things. So it will never confuse the related words for "an orange" and "the color orange."

Download Nisus Thesaurus 1.0.5 in Softonic

Translation Service allows you to replace the selected text with a translation in any of several languages—in just one click. It works in any Mac OS X program, so you don't have to copy and paste text back and forth. Services work in applications that were designed for Mac OS X ("Cocoa" applications), such as TextEdit, Mail, Stickies, OmniWeb, Safari, Keynote, and Xcode.

Services do not work in most applications that were ported from Mac OS 9 ("Carbon" applications), such as Microsoft Office, AppleWorks, or America Online. However, services do work in some updated Carbon applications, most notably BBEdit and the Finder.

Further, the selected text must be editable, since Translation Service replaces the selected text with a translation. For example, you can't translate the text in a web page, an incoming mail message, or a PDF. In these cases, you should copy the text to a compatible program, or use the translation window. To translate an incoming message in Mail, just hit reply and translate the quoted message.

Download Translation Service 1.2.6 in Softonic

LiveDictionary is a Safari extension that adds fast, convenient dictionary lookups to the web. Once installed, it becomes a transparent part of Safari. LiveDictionary offers a wide array of dictionaries for technical terms, general language, and bilingual usage.

Download LiveDictionary 1.2.5 in Softonic

OmniDictionary is a Mac OS X client for network dictionary servers. It's pretty straightforward - type a word into the entry field, hit return, and the definition is displayed. If the dictionary server supports multiple dictionaries, you can select your desired dictionary from the dictionary popup to limit queries to that specific dictionary, or you can query all the dictionaries. Since OmniDictionary is simply a client for dictionary servers on the web, you have to be connected to the Internet (or have access to a local dictionary server) in order to be able to perform lookups.

Download OmniDictionary 2.0.4 in Softonic

Word Translator is a foreign language dictionary and translation tool for more than 12 languages, including Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Tagalog, Finnish, Latin, Italian and Dutch. The demo includes three dictionaries only: English-Spanish, English-French, and English-German.

Download Word Translator 5.2.2 in Softonic