The best online dictionary
In 2025, the online translators are quite good. Google Translate is actually usable, and its Camera feature is a life-saver. DeepL makes use of context and can produce high-quality texts. And even open-source solutions like LibreTranslate have reached the point where the other person will most likely understand you.
Yet, they’re not always the perfect solution: When I start getting a hold of the language’s grammar, I like using dictionaries instead, since I can usually pluralize and conjugate and put the words in the correct order by myself. Sadly, the best dictionaries are usually the thick paper ones: they’re pretty expensive and hard to use on the go. Using an online translator as a dictionary yields bad results, and proper online dictionaries are either lacking, expensive, or a UX nightmare. But there is one exception.
Introducing the best online dictionary that is free, libre, open-source, peer-reviewed, and extremely good: Wikipedia! Yes, you’ve heard me right—I am talking about Wikipedia, not Wiktionary. The latter is quite good, too, but only for same-language lookups, since translations between words are often missing.
But Wikipedia is different, as it operates not on words, but on concrete objects and concepts. It’s the only tool that will let you easily differentiate between a server (computing) and an altar server.
To use Wikipedia as the dictionary, all you have to do is to open the page for the thing you want to translate in the source language and then switch the article language. As a bonus, you also get a (usually) well-written article you can practice your reading skills on!
Happy language learning!