You have an English text and need to know what it says in German, or the other way round, and you don't want to type every word into a website. English-German-English M Translation from Langsoft is a desktop machine translation program built for exactly that pair of languages.
Quick facts
- Vendor: Langsoft, Switzerland
- Languages: English to German and German to English
- Platform: Windows
- Licence: the vendor's price page lists it as free for private use
Key features
Two bilingual dictionaries behind the translation
The program translates in both directions using two bilingual dictionaries, one for each direction.
German words typed with or without umlauts
It understands words with Umlaut (ä, ö, ü) as well as the plain spellings (ae, oe, ue, a, o, u). You can type on any keyboard and still get a result.
British and American spelling both accepted
You don't need to worry about "colour" versus "color". The program translates words regardless of British or American spelling.
Interactive and batch translation
Translate text interactively as you work, or run it in batch mode for larger jobs.
Translate text copied straight from the Internet
Select a portion of text on a web page, copy it, and paste it in for translation.
Who it's for
It suits you if you regularly read or write between English and German and want an offline Windows tool rather than a web service. It aims at an understandable translation of what the original text means, not polished prose.
Pros and cons
- Pro: covers both directions in one program.
- Pro: tolerant of umlaut and spelling variants.
- Pro: batch mode for bigger texts.
- Pro: free for private use according to the vendor's price list.
- Con: it is a dictionary-based program from a small specialist vendor, so expect meaning-level output rather than polished prose.
- Con: Windows only.
FAQs
Does it translate both ways?
Yes, English to German and German to English.
Do I have to type umlauts?
No. Both the umlaut letters and the ae, oe, ue forms are understood.
Can I translate text from a web page?
Yes. Copy the selected text and paste it into the program.
Can it handle many texts at once?
Yes, it has a batch mode alongside interactive translation.