Spanish Dictionaries review

As promised, here’s the Spanish Dictionary review. Sorry it took so long, but, luckily, I’ve been working a lot this week. Without any further ado, here’s the list of the best Spanish Dictionaries available in the market (according to my very personal opinion).

Diccionario de la Real Academia Española (ex DRAE, now DiLE), by the Real Academia Española

This should be your go-to dictionary; the best thing about it is that it’s online. Go to the webpage of the Real Academia Española (click here) and search for anything you want. It’s quite useful, you’ll find a lot of terms that are usually missing in the pocket dictionaries, along with phrases and most common collocations. As all of the Academia´s publications, it is a bit stiff and unrealistic in with certain subjects... but hey, it´s free.

Diccionario Panhispánico de dudas, by the Real Academia Española

This is the dictionary you should use when dealing with texts from anywhere outside Spain. It’s got entries from all the Spanish speaking countries, most of them in America. But beware, some propositional collocations may vary according to the country they are used in. That’s why phrases considered wrong in Spain or even in Argentina may be accepted in other countries in America. I don’t want to start splitting hairs, but don’t forget that detail. As the previous one, you got the free online version here (and the same disadvantages).

Diccionario de uso del español, by Maria Moliner

This is my personal favorite. Legend says Maria Moliner worked as in a library, and one day, when she was 51, started writing the most complete dictionary she could, getting the words from newspapers and such. It was published seventeen years later, though it was not finished yet, according to her. The best thing about it, it’s a “usage” dictionary; this means that every entry has an example of how the word is used in actual language, isn’t that great? On the downside, it’s not free, and actually quite expensive, though I’ve heard you can download it or something like that…

Diccionario de Dificultades de la Lengua Española, by Manuel Seco

Now when you get that feeling that a word is not what it seems, and after looking it up in the previous two dictionaries you still can’t shake it off, then it’s time for the backup. This dictionary has those hard to find terms, and those way too ambiguous words, and is also available on the net, if you know where to look.

Diccionario de las Preposiciones Españolas, by Alicia María Zorrilla

This is a very specific dictionary, used a lot in translations. For those of you who constantly get doubts about whether you’re using the right preposition or not, it is definitely a must.

Oxford Spanish

There had to be a bilingual dictionary in this list, and of all I’ve tried, this one I liked the most. It’s unbelievable how many phrases it’s got, yesterday, while doing some actual work, I came across the entry “bad hair day”. That’s what I call a complete dictionary! It’s got sense indicators and field labels, so you always know whether you can use that word or not; for example, if you look for fresa, you got one entry under the Botanic label (strawberry), another under the Metallurgy label (milling cutter) and another one under the Dentistry label (drill). You just can’t go wrong!

If you ever read my profile, you found out I´m studying Translation, and just could´t go through Translator´s day without some kind of landmark. To all wannabe translator out there, hope you benefit from this dictionary review.