ABBYY: Lingvo for iPhone and iPad will be released this fall (three licenses for readers)

Not so long ago in our Twitter @macradar we asked readers what they would like to learn about Lingvo for Mac. All the issues raised and the most popular ones were asked the representative Rylov Alexander, who heads the department of linguistic products of ABBYY. Thanks to Alexander for the replies.

Lingvo long been waiting on the Mac. How long was the development and why it was delayed?

Many users who work on the Macintosh, have asked us to develop Lingvo for this platform. However, for a commercial company to create this or that decision is reasonable when there is a market for it. Until recently, the Macintosh market in our country was negligible, and it was not profitable to produce Dictionary for the Mac. As soon as the situation has changed for the better, we decided to make a version of Lingvo for Mac.

With regard to the development process, the establishment of the product for the new platform - not an easy task, and often difficult to tell exactly how much time has been developed or that decision. Our product consists of a shell program and technology comprising multiple components. Shell program we wrote from scratch, and you can calculate how much time was spent on it. Technology is transferred from Windows to Mac OS gradually, we started this work a long time, and in the design phase of the shell just entered a year ago. By the standards of software development is quite normal as possible.

We have in the comments and on Twitter, some users said they would like to purchase it separately. Is this issue addressed? If so, why, in the end, we decided to abandon it?

It should be remembered that each dictionary there is a particular author who decides what is and what is not. For we are the authors of electronic publishing, and they transfer us to the scope of the rights which correspond to our publication model. Thus, the authors agreed to grant the rights to distribute the dictionaries as part of the name of our Product - ABBYY Lingvo, and not on any distribution of dictionaries for use within arbitrary software. The practice, when people are removed from our own product, convert and use dictionaries in other software. This is nothing like copyright infringement, as well as our own, publishing.

Lingvo for Mac is often compared with free Dictionary.app, to which you can connect a third-party dictionaries, for that has the appropriate rights. The same function also have Lingvo: you can plug in any set of dictionaries Lingvo format of supported languages. This is done in order to allow users to connect their own glossaries (eg, compiled in While working on the translation of corporate documents), rather than dictionaries, purchased for use with other programs. On www.lingvoda.ru resource you can find many useful dictionaries, created by independent authors. Users can download any of these dictionaries and connect it to Lingvo.

Lingvo users who have been exposed to other vocabularies programs on the Mac, can be found in Lingvo a number of advantages. For example, the translation of the words in any form is based on one of the best descriptions of the morphology of the world, which is confirmed by various tests. This means that you get a high-quality translation, and can also view a complete list of forms foreign word with all its exceptions (this is especially true for those who use in Lingvo learning). For the German language dictionary can break composites into its component parts and transfer them separately if there is no translation phrase. Also there Lingvo voice of foreign words, integrated instant translation of words on a combination of keys and moving the mouse in many foreign programs, history of translation search, easy navigation within the card to view related information from other translation dictionaries and cards translation. Lingvo Dictionary database can grow indefinitely, while the increase in the number of dictionaries is almost no effect on the speed.

What most users need? Translation to be fast, accurate and where he needs it. It is because of these qualities the sum result. And a dictionary - an important, but only one third of this result. To get a high-quality and complete translation, dictionaries should be a lot (one dictionary even 100-200 thousand words does not cover all user requests). Once it becomes a lot of dictionaries, they have to manage. Two other important components of the software - it is a dictionary management. This search technology suitable translation and usability. This is something on which we are constantly working to develop Lingvo.

As part Lingvo for Mac dictionaries for 7 languages. Multi-language version for Windows richer: there are dictionaries for 11 languages. Why is that? Whether to wait for users to a special version for Mac?

So far released only the first version of Lingvo for Mac, we will finalize with the wishes of our users. Lingvo for Mac for 7 languages ​​(including Russian) - is the best option program, which includes the most popular European languages ​​Lingvo Russian users. To add to the product new languages, we need to do quite a lot of work. For example, a separate engineering task - sorting glossary for the Chinese language. Gradually, all the engineering challenges are solved.

On the site there is a demo version of ABBYY Lingvo for Mac, but there is a trial version of «ABBYY Lingvo x3 English version" for Windows. Is there any chance that correct the injustice? :-)

While we can not provide a trial version. About the product has already been said a lot, hope this information will be enough to see all the pros and cons Lingvo for Mac. In the future, be sure and make a trialkyl.

When released an update Lingvo for Mac (with the wishes) and how to learn about this update (in fact in the application auto-update mechanism is not)?

Sales began only in mid-August, and it is too early to talk about updates and even more about the new version of the product. We accept all the wishes of our customers, carefully studying their comments. As soon as we receive a sufficient number of proposals, made additions to the product and announce the update.

Does the release of Russian spellchecker under poppy ready?

Russian spell checker for Mac was created a long time ago. Recently, however, we have not updated because it is designed for the PowerPC architecture is very old versions of Mac OS X and Microsoft Office. Alteration spell checker for the Intel and PowerPC platforms, with support for all versions used Microsoft Office - consuming task, and it is unlikely to be justified commercially. As we expected, Microsoft has finally supported the Russian language in the Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac. Given the other very important improvements in this product, reasonable prices, and the fact that computers with PowerPC architecture is almost out out of use, it can be expected that in the next couple of years, the vast majority of users update the version of Microsoft Office. We know only one commercially successful speller - Duden Korrektor for German. However, its success is due to the fact that the Germans have a kind of "national game" - often enough to change the spelling. Publisher Duden has an important mission - to support for German users speller to date, constantly and carefully to include all the necessary updates spelling. We have such a "national fun" fortunately, no, the rules described in the grammar Rosenthal, relevant for decades. Therefore, with the advent of high-quality Russian speller from Microsoft for Mac to use an external spell checker is simply meaningless.

Your opinion about iOS? Do you plan to Lingvo for iPhone and iPad? Can you name the approximate dates? Does any other development for this platform?

We believe iOS platform is very promising: a number of independent studies have shown that today it is expedient to create applications for iOS. According to expert estimates (Gartner, ABI Research and other) in 2009 through the App Store sales amounted to more than 95% of all online sales applications in the world, and as a whole in 2010. The user downloads from 3.5 to 4.5 billion apps and pay for it about 5-7 billion dollars.

Today in the AppStore a first ABBYY product for iPhone - Business Card Reader. This app is for business people, which recognizes contact information on business cards and transfers it to the iPhone address book. September 30 was a new, third, version of the application, it is significantly different from the previous two. Now Business Card Reader is able to find the contact information in social networks (Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook), as well as Hoover's and Google Maps. In the third version, we have updated the interface and added a number of features that make using the application even more convenient.

I will not yet go into details, just note that at the moment we are developing several applications for the iPhone and iPad (including Lingvo). They come out this fall.

***

For readers Macradar company ABBYY granted three licenses for electronic dictionary Lingvo for Mac. To get one of them, tell us a tweet about the interview (for example: "On @MacRadar interview with ABBYY Lingvo and draw http://goo.gl/cnnw»). Then here in the comments please link to a tweet or your account (and do not forget to Follow us, or Twitter does not allow messages to send). The winners will be called on Thursday. a great program, I recommend to take part in the competition :)

UPDATE. The winners: KO $ TA, Balansse, Sergey (@kserg). All of them sent the keys to Lingvo for Mac.