Love overwhelmed me today as I was working on a very technical translation...love not only for my job, but also for this extremely precious tool: the Merriam-Webster Visual Dictionary. It is just perfect for you, technical translator who is going crazy, spending hours to understand what that specific term refers to and also for you interpreter, who is preparing for an assignment. Unless you are an engineer or a scientist, some words may have no sense to your eyes. Seeing things rather than learning plain words is way more effective.And searching for pictures on Google might not proof enough sometimes...and there it is: the visual dictionary. Of course there is a hard copy version - but the online one is very handy!
It is organized into different sections (astronomy, hearth, plants & gardening, animal kingdom, human being, food & kitchen, house, clothing & articles, arts & architecture, communications, transport & machinery, energy, science, society, sports & games) and each entry has a definition and a detailed picture with all the specific terms related to the object.
I wish there was something similar -only - in Italian. So far I've only seen multilingual-compact dictionaries. So you find an Italian visual dictionary let me know.Have you ever used a visual dictionary? What for? did you find it useful?
This is a snapshot of the entry "bound book" - exciting, isn't it?
Glottovolante
