Use best dictionaries in Ubuntu

There is a wonderful collection of dictionaries for many languages in this web site

Unfortunately, SDictionary Linux client is ugly and inconvenient.

There is another dictionary system - StarDict - which has a good-looking GTK2 client. It is included in Feisty repositories.

Unfortunately, the dictionaries for StarDict are not as good.

Let’s combine both worlds! I am going to convert SDictionary dictionaries to StarDict format and use them in StarDict

Install StarDict

Download Dictconv (a small program to convert a dictionay file type in another dictionary file type) and install

./configure
sudo make all install


You will need build tools for compiling. Install them

sudo aptitude install build-essential libxml2-dev

Download one of the dictionaries, e.g. English-Spanish, and convert it to StarDict format (.ifo)

dictconv -o EnSp.ifo EnSp.dct

Here is successful operation

The result will be three files

EnSp.dz
EnSp.ifo
EnSp.idx

Put them into a folder and copy that folder into the folder /usr/share/stardict/dic so that the dictionary appears in StarDict

sudo cp FOLDER-WITH-FILES /usr/share/stardict/dic

You will find StarDict in menu Application > Accessories

You can convert and use Babylon dictionaries, too!

Read more