Writing-related Resources


The third section of useful links and resources for translators and interpreters contains resources to help translation professionals improve how we write.

The categories in this section are:

Collocations / Corpora / Digital Journals / Digital Libraries /

Encyclopaedias / Referencing & Citation / Style Guides /

Thesauri / Writing / Other Word Tools

The other four sections of useful links and resources for translators and interpreters on separate pages are:

general dictionaries and glossaries

subject-specific dictionaries and glossaries

translation-related tools and links

other links of interest

It is worth checking with your University to see whether they have agreements in place for you to access some of these resources free of charge.

Last updated February 2023

Collocations

  1. DiCE Diccionario de Colocaciones del Español
  2. Dictionnaire des Collocations
  3. Dictionnaire des Cooccurrences
  4. Hyper Collocation search engine for finding example sentences in arXiv
  5. Online Collocation Dictionary
  6. Ozdic collocation dictionary

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Corpora 

  1. A Collection of English Corpora
  2. AntConc freeware corpus analysis toolkit for concordancing and text analysis by Laurence Anthony
  3. BootCaT Bootstrap Corpora and Terms from the Web
  4. British National Corpus
  5. British Parliament (Hansard) Corpus
  6. Business Letter Corpus
  7. BYU-BNC British National Corpus
  8. BYU Wikipedia Corpus YouTube Overview of this corpus
  9. COCA The Corpus of Contemporary American English
  10. COHA The Corpus of Historical American English
  11. CORDE Corpus Diacrónico del Español by the Real Academia Española
  12. Coronavirus Corpus
  13. Corpus.BYU.EDU Corpora created by Mark Davies, BYU
  14. Corpus of Canadian English (Strathy)
  15. Corpus del español siglos XIII-XX
  16. Corpus del español del siglo XXI
  17. CREA Corpus de Referencia del Español Actual by the Real Academia Española
  18. English-Corpora.org List of over 15 corpora
  19. GloWbe Corpus of Global Web-based English
  20. Google Books American, British and Spanish
  21. Google Books Ngram Viewer displays graph showing how phrases have occurred in a corpus of books
  22. Google Scholar
  23. IntelliText Intelligent Tools for Creating and Analysing Electronic Text Corpora for Humanities Research by CTS (University of Leeds)
  24. iWeb: The Intelligent Web-based Corpus
  25. Juremy EU Legal Terminology Search
  26. OPUS open source parallel corpus
  27. PaGeS German/Spanish parallel corpus based on fiction and proceedings of the European Parliament
  28. PERC Corpus Online academic journal texts compiled as part of Professional English Research Consortium project
  29. SkELL (Sketch Engine for Language Learning) in English, German, Italian, Czech and Estonian
  30. Springer Exemplar discover how a particular term or phrase is used in scientific literature
  31. TED Corpus Search Engine TCSE for exploring transcripts of TED talks
  32. The Sketch Engine – Corpus Query System (subscription required)
  33. TIME Magazine corpus 1923-2006
  34. WebCorp

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Digital Journals

  1. AERA Open American Educational Research Association – articles on education
  2. Cambridge Core journals and books online
  3. DOAJ Directory of Open Access Journals – an online directory
  4. Emerald Insight covering fields of management, business, education, library studies, health care and engineering
  5. Google Scholar
  6. IOS Press journals and books related to scientific, technical and medical (STM) research
  7. JoSTrans The Journal of Specialised Translation
  8. JSTOR Journal Storage, a digital library (subscription required to access most content)
  9. Karger Publishers scientific and medical journals and books
  10. OpenEdition Journals for humanities and social sciences
  11. Project MUSE humanities and social sciences resources
  12. Redalyc Red de Revistas Científicas de América Latina y el Caribe, España y Portugal
  13. SAGE Journals articles on social and behavioural sciences and humanities
  14. Springer journals, books, series, protocols and reference works
  15. Taylor & Francis Online includes Routledge (advanced search & often pay per article)

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Digital Libraries

  1. Adam Matthew Digital primary sources for teaching and research in humanities and social sciences
  2. arXiv an open-access archive for scholarly articles on physics, mathematics, economics, computer science, quantitative biology, quantitative finance, statistics, electrical engineering and systems science
  3. Bartleby.com free access to books and information on the Web
  4. Biblioteca Digital Hispánica Biblioteca Nacional de España
  5. Blinkist non-fiction book-summarising subscription service (7-day free trial; from £4.99 per month)
  6. Cambridge Core journals and books online
  7. COPAC UK and Irish academic, national and specialist library catalogues
  8. EBSCO Education Research Databases
  9. Europeana the new home of the European Library
  10. Google Books
  11. HathiTrust Digital Library a partnership of academic and research institutions
  12. Internet Archive non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, etc.
  13. Issuu digital publishing platform for magazines, catalogues, newspapers and other publications
  14. Media History Digital Library
  15. Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO)
  16. Monografías.com Spanish virtual library of PhD theses, publications and educational resources
  17. OECD iLibrary all OECD publications and statistics since 1998
  18. OpenEdition Books for humanities and social sciences, over half are open access
  19. PARES Portal de Archivos Españoles
  20. PDF Drive search engine of free PDF ebooks and files
  21. ProQuest journals, newspapers, reports, working papers,
  22. ResearchGate
  23. SAGE Research Methods books, dictionaries, encyclopaedia, video, journal articles, etc. on research methods
  24. Scribd e-books, audiobooks, magazines, documents and films (subscription required; 30-day free trial)
  25. Virtual Library of Musicology

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Encyclopaedias

  1. Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias searches several resources
  2. Academic Dictionaries and Encyclopedias German version of the above
  3. Credo Reference (subscription required)
  4. Enciclopèdia.cat Catalan
  5. Encyclopaedia Britannica (subscription required – can be accessed with UK library card)
  6. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  7. Larousse Encylopédie
  8. The Literary Encyclopedia repository of reference work on literature, history and culture (subscription required)
  9. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (subscription required – can be accessed with UK library card)
  10. Oxford Research Encyclopedias (subscription required for some; Business and Management, Global Public Health, Planetary Science, Economics and Finance and Neuroscience are free)
  11. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
  12. Wikipedia also useful for looking up terms in other languages

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Referencing & Citation

  1. APA Style 6th Edition Resources American Psychological Association
  2. Cite It In generates citations for APA, MLA and Chicago systems
  3. Citing & Referencing: Harvard Style Imperial College London (PDF)
  4. Harvard Citations Skills@Library – Leeds University
  5. Harvard Referencing University of Sheffield
  6. Harvard System Anglia Ruskin University (includes PDF download)
  7. Harvard style reference lists and bibliographies Skills@Library – Leeds University
  8. Referencing and Citation Styles Harvard, APA 6th, Vancouver, AJARE, Chicago 17th A, etc. – University of Sydney
  9. Referencing with Harvard University College London

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Style Guides

  1. The ACS Style Guide (pay to view)
  2. AMA Manual of Style American Medical Association
  3. APA Style American Psychological Association
  4. Apple Style Guide
  5. The Associated Press (AP) Stylebook
  6. Association of Art Editors (AAE)
  7. The ATA Chronicle Style Guide
  8. Australian Government Style Manual
  9. BBC News Style Guide links to a page where you can download a Word copy (PDF copy link)
  10. Bristol University
  11. The Canadian Style
  12. The Chicago Manual of Style
  13. Conscious Style Guide to help writers and editors think about inclusive language
  14. Disability Language Style Guide National Center on Disability and Journalism
  15. EASE Guidelines for Authors and Translators of Scientific Articles to be Published in English free PDFs in multiple languages
  16. English Style Guide – European Commission A handbook for authors and translators
  17. Eurofound Style Guide European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
  18. European Union Interinstitutional Style Guide
  19. Fowler’s Dictionary of Modern English Usage
  20. Government Digital Service Style Guide for all content published on GOV.UK
  21. GPO Style Manual United States Government Publishing Office
  22. Guardian and Observer Style Guide
  23. Guidelines for Nonhandicapping Language in APA Journals
  24. Microsoft Writing Style Guide
  25. MLA Formatting and Style Guide Purdue University
  26. National Geographic Style Manual
  27. OECD Style Guide
  28. Plain Language Commission
  29. Reuters Handbook of Journalism
  30. The Savvy Newcomer Style Guide
  31. SYbIL Style Guide Spanish Yearbook of International Law
  32. Talking about Disability – A Style Guide Buckinghamshire Disability Service
  33. Tameri Guide for Writers Stylebook US usage
  34. Telegraph Style Book
  35. Twentieth Century British History Oxford Journals
  36. United Nations Editorial Manual Online
  37. University of Cambridge Editorial Style Guide
  38. University of Oxford Style Guide
  39. University of Technology Sydney Publications Style Guide
  40. V&A Style Guide for Gallery Texts
  41. Vancouver Citing and Referencing Style Imperial College
  42. Wikipedia Manual of Style
  43. World Bank Editorial Style Guide
  44. World Bank Translation Style Guide
  45. The Yahoo! Style Guide

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Thesauri

  1. AntonymFor.com provides list of opposites for English words
  2. Collins Thesaurus
  3. Diccionario de sinónimos en español
  4. Diccionario de Sinónimos y Antónimos
  5. Diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos Busca Palabra
  6. Diccionario de sinónimos y antónimos WordReference
  7. Ideas Afines ideas, palabras, conceptos y términos relacionados
  8. OneLook Thesaurus and Reverse Dictionary
  9. Power Thesaurus crowdsourced thesaurus built by a community of writers
  10. Rhyme Zone for rhymes, synonyms, definitions, etc.
  11. TheSage English Dictionary and Thesaurus (free software to download)
  12. Thesaurus.com
  13. Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus
  14. UNBIS Thesaurus United Nations Bibliographical Information System
  15. UNESCO Thesaurus English, French, Russian and Spanish
  16. Urban Thesaurus
  17. UK Archival Thesaurus
  18. Word Hippo similar or opposite words
  19. WordWeb English Dictionary and Thesaurus (free and paid software to download)

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Writing

  1. Academic Phrasebank University of Manchester
  2. Academic Phrasebank Ref-N-Write
  3. Antidote, a writing assistance tool for French and English (€119)
  4. Capitalize My Title Chicago, AP, MLA, NY Times, etc.
  5. Claire’s Clear Writing Tips European Commission
  6. FocusWriter a distraction-free writing environment
  7. Ginger writing app with grammar checker, dictionary and translation tool
  8. Glossary of Writing Terms and Definitions
  9. Grammarly online proofreading tool that checks grammar, punctuation and style
  10. Guide to Punctuation University of Sussex
  11. Guidelines for contractors translating into English European Commission Translation Resources
  12. Hemingway Editor ($19.99)
  13. Improve Your Writing University of Bristol
  14. Language Tool grammar, spelling and style software for over 20 languages
  15. Ludwig find your sentence in context, paraphrase your sentence, discover missing word, compare frequency of words or two sentences, etc.
  16. Misused English Words and Expression in EU Publications Translation Directorate
  17. OmmWriter distraction-free writing environment with natural backgrounds and sounds
  18. PerfectIt Proofreading Software for Professionals (free 30-day trial; cost: $99)
  19. ProWritingAid improve readability and eliminate errors (free version or cost from $40/year)
  20. Readability Checker the tool checks writing against the Flesch-Kincaid reading ease score, the Gunning Fog score and the SMOG index
  21. Readable.io for measuring and improving readability of documents or websites (from $3 per month)
  22. Repetition Detector detects repetitions in texts; software in en and fr but works with da, de, es, fi, is, it, nl, no, pt, sv (free 30-day trial; cost: $7.40)
  23. SMOG (Simplified Measure of Gobbledygook) calculator using 7 readability formulas to give a grade level
  24. Stilus spelling and grammar checker for Spanish (free trial; cost from €29.95/year)
  25. StyleWriter editing and proofreading software for plain English (free trial available; from $90 per month)
  26. WordRake edits for clarity in Microsoft Word and Outlook (from $129 per year)
  27. Writefull improves any academic text by correcting grammar, vocabulary, punctuation and more
  28. Writemonkey a stripped-down writing application so you can concentrate on your thoughts
  29. The Writer’s Diet tool to discover whether your writing is flabby or fit
  30. Writer’s Digest write better, get published
  31. Writers Online advice, competitions, courses, etc.

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Other Word Tools

  1. Acronym Finder
  2. Diatopix shows graphic distribution of words, terms and expressions
  3. Edifix online bibliographic reference solution for meeting style requirements (from $39.95 per month)
  4. How Many Syllables
  5. Missing Letters Crossword Solver link also takes you to some apps to help with Scrabble
  6. Said What? over 22,000 quotes and proverbs
  7. TextExpander inserts snippets of text from repository of emails, boilerplate, etc., with quick search or abbreviation (from $3.33 per month)
  8. Title Case Converter
  9. WordbyLetter.com search for words beginning or ending with a specific letter
  10. Word Unscrambler unscramble letters, scrabble calculator, anagram solver, find words that start or end with certain letters
  11. Word Unscrambler/Anagram Solver/Random Word Generator

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Explore this blog by starting with the categories page

Images are by: 1) SatyaPrem from Pixabay; 2) Sara Price from Pixabay; 3) Devalei Love from Pixabay; 4) Werner Moser from Pixabay

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