[Summary]
Michael Kellogg created WordReference.com in 1999. He wrote much
later on his website: "I started this site in 1999 in an effort to
provide free online bilingual dictionaries and tools to the world.
The site has grown gradually ever since to become one of the most-
used online dictionaries, and the top online dictionary for its
language pairs of English-Spanish, English-French, English-Italian,
Spanish-French, and Spanish-Portuguese. It is consistently ranked
in the top 500 most-visited websites in the world. I am proud of
my history of innovation with dictionaries on the internet. Many
of the features such as being able to click any word in a
dictionary entry were first implemented by me.” WordReference was
also provided high-quality language forums, and lighter versions
of some dictionaries for mobile devices.
***
Michael Kellogg created WordReference.com in 1999 to offer free
online bilingual translation dictionaries.
Much later, Michael wrote on his website: "I started this site in
1999 in an effort to provide free online bilingual dictionaries
and tools to the world. The site has grown gradually ever since
to become one of the most-used online dictionaries, and the top
online dictionary for its language pairs of English-Spanish,
English-French, English-Italian, Spanish-French, and Spanish-
Portuguese. It is consistently ranked in the top 500 most-visited
websites in the world. I am proud of my history of innovation with
dictionaries on the internet. Many of the features such as being
able to click any word in a dictionary entry were first
implemented by me.”
How was the idea behind his project? “The internet has done an
incredible job of bringing the world together in the last few
years. Of course, one of the greatest barriers has been language.
Much of the content is in English and many, many users are reading
English-language webpages as a second language. I know from my
own experiences with Spanish-language websites that many readers
probably understand much of what they are reading, but not every
single word”, thus the need for a website offering free online
bilingual translation dictionaries.
In 2010, WordReference has also offered a monolingual dictionary
in English as well as dictionaries from English to other languages
(Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Greek, Japanese, Korean, Polish,
Portuguese, Romanian, Turkish), and vice versa. For the Spanish
language, there was a monolingual dictionary, a dictionary of
synonyms, a Spanish-French dictionary and a Spanish-Portuguese
dictionary. Conjugation tables were available for French, Italian
and Spanish. Monolingual dictionaries were available for German
and Russian.
WordReference Mini was a miniature version of the site to be
embedded into other sites, for example sites teaching languages
online. A mobile device version was available for dictionaries
from English to French, Italian and Spanish, and vice versa, with
other language pairs to come.
As stated by Michael Kellogg: “Today [in 2011], I have three main
goals with this website. First, continue to create free online
bilingual dictionaries for English to many other languages. I
strive to offer translations for "all" English words, terms,
idioms, sayings, etc. Second, provide the world's best language
forums; and third, continue to innovate to produce the best
website and tools for the world.”