Guest Author - Holly Fox
L E O. Three simple letters that will do more for your understanding of the German language than any paper dictionary you�ve ever used. Link Everything Online is the brainchild of Technische Universitaet Muenchen�s and Ludwig Maximilians Universit�t M�nchen�s computer science departments and began as an archive of university databases accessible to the network before HTML and the concept of the World Wide Web. Originally called ISAR, short for Informationssysteme und Archiv, the name was changed to LEO in 1994 as the name ISAR was already owned. �Leo,� which is Latin for �lion,� was meant to represent the lions on the Bavarian coat of arms for the loyal Munich students.
The strength of the website is its three dictionaries: English-German, French-German, and Spanish-German. British English is differentiated from American English as well as technical words from more vulgar ones. Idioms and phrases are included and each entry is its own hyperlink, which makes it easy to check the translation in both languages. For example, if you type in �masthead� the German definition is �Impressum.� But when you click on �Impressum� you�ll find that there are several other English words that mean �Impressum� and that �masthead� is considered an American word. Fiddle around with it and if you�re living in a two-language world like I am you�ll start searching for English words at the tip of your tongue by typing in their German synonyms.
When LEO can�t find the word or phrase that you�re looking for it will direct you to the forum where users discuss meanings and translations and you can often find exactly what you�re looking for. This is an important feature for novice translators. If the phrase is not there yet, post a question and see what the rest of the world thinks.
Although not as well known now as the dictionaries, the rest of the website really does link everything. Check out sites on German Social Security, the German Table Tennis League, and perhaps my favorite, their Cocktail Bar with over 2,500 different cocktail recipes. The Munich tourism links page including everything from pharmacy listings, museums, and weather websites will also cover anybody planning a trip to the city.
Explore the website a little bit and see what you find. For its dictionaries, LEO has some of the social force of Google in the German speaking world: many a professional has the website bookmarked and no translation conflict can be resolved without first asking LEO. If you are trying to figure out what your great-grandmother wrote in that letter you found in the attic or you just want to know how to say "I'm pleased to meet you," this should be your first stop. (According to LEO, it's "Ich freue mich, Sie kennenzulernen.")
