The linguistic tools available online were the Logos Dictionary, a multilingual dictionary with 7.5 billion words (in fall 1998); the Logos Wordtheque, a multilingual library with 328 billion words extracted from translated novels, technical manuals, and other texts, that could be searched by language, word, author or title; the Logos Linguistic Resources, a database of 500 glossaries; and the Logos Universal Conjugator, a database for verbs in 17 languages.
When interviewed by Annie Kahn in an article of the French daily Le Monde dated 7 December 1997, Rodrigo Vergara, head of Logos, explained: "We wanted all our translators to have access to the same translation tools. So we made them available on the internet, and while we were at it we decided to make the site open to the public. This made us extremely popular, and also gave us a lot of exposure. This move has in fact attracted many customers, and also allowed us to widen our network of translators, thanks to contacts made in the wake of the initiative."
In the same article, called “Les mots pour le dire” (The words to tell it), Annie Kahn wrote: "The Logos site is much more than a mere dictionary or a collection of links to other online dictionaries. The cornerstone is the document search program, which processes a corpus of literary texts available free of charge on the web. If you search for the definition or the translation of a word ('didactique', for example), you get not only the answer sought, but also a quote from one of the literary works containing the word (in our case, an essay by Voltaire). All it takes is a click on the mouse to access the whole text or even to order the book, including in foreign translations, thanks to a partnership agreement with the famous online bookstore Amazon.com. However, if no text containing the required word is found, the program acts as a search engine, sending the user to other web sources containing this word. In the case of certain words, you can even hear the pronunciation. If there is no translation currently available, the system calls on the public to contribute. Everyone can make suggestions, after which Logos translators check the suggested translations they receive."
Ten years later, in 2007, the Logos Library (formerly Wordtheque) included 710 billion words, Linguistic Resources (no change of name) included 1,215 glossaries, and the Universal Conjugator (formerly Conjugation of Verbs) included verbs in 36 languages.
1997 > SPECIALIZED TERMINOLOGY DATABASES
[Summary] Some international organizations have run terminology databases in their own field of expertise for their translation services. In 1997, some databases were freely available on the web, to be used by language professionals throughout the world and by the internet community at large, for example ILOTERM, maintained by the International Labor Organization (ILO), TERMITE (ITU Telecommunication Terminology Database), maintained by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and WHOTERM (WHO Terminology Information System), maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO).
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In 1997, some specialized terminology databases maintained by international organizations in their own field of expertise were freely available on the web, to be used by language professionals throughout the world and by the internet community at large.
Here are three examples with ILOTERM, maintained by the
International Labor Organization (ILO), TERMITE (ITU
Telecommunication Terminology Database), maintained by the
International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and WHOTERM (WHO
Terminology Information System), maintained by the World Health
Organization (WHO).
ILOTERM is a quadrilingual (English, French, German, Spanish) terminology database maintained by the Terminology and Reference Unit of the Official Documentation Branch (OFFDOC) at the International Labor Office (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland. As explained on its website, the primary purpose of ILOTERM is to provide solutions, reflecting current usage, to terminology issues in the social and labor fields. Terms are available in English with their French, Spanish and German equivalents. The database also includes the ILO structure and programs, official names for international institutions, national bodies and employers' and workers' organizations, and names of international meetings and symposiums.