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[eyeballmassage.livejournal.com]

i'm looking for a good unabridged russian/english bilingual dictionary, preferably with a small grammar/style guide inside. i already made a similar post in linguaphiles a few months ago, but the responses i got linked to sites that were completely in russian. i know it might seem a little ridiculous to want an unabridged bilingual dictionary when you can't even navigate a web site that is completely in the other language, but i like to have a large dictionary to start with for whatever reason. if anyone could recommend me a dictionary with an english website, or be willing to help me navigate an all-russian site (i could help you with french in return :P), let me know!

Comments

[buddah-gautama.livejournal.com]

Translate.ru English version... (http://www.online-translator.com/default.asp?lang=en) There are French, Spanish and German versions also... It's slow but useful and simple... Peace...

[fox-c.livejournal.com]

If you want a paper copy between two covers - you really can't go wrong with the Oxford Russian-English. I don't know if it's "abridged" or not, but it was good enough when I was slogging through Pasternak my last year at Uni.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

The best russian-english english-russian dictionaries I've ever found, I found in Russia. Perhaps youcan get them online. If you want "uabridged" levels of word inclusion, you're not going to find one book both ways. You're looking for two books.
Bolshoi Anglo-Russkii slovar' (Complete English-Russian Dictionary) ed. V.K. Muller (umlaut over that u) Published by Ripol Classic (Рипол Классик)
Bolshoi Russko-Angliiskii slovar' (Comprehensive Russian-English Dictionary), ed. Akhmanova. Published by Russky Yazyk Media.

The Mueller dictionary was recommended by a former professor as THE best. However, it does lack a mini grammar guide.

Wait, I just realized that you're a beginner, yes?
You most likely want the Harper-Collins russian-english dictionary, which has a good little grammar guide and is GREAT for idiomatic expressions associated with the entries.
Oxford Russian-English isn't bad, either. What your preference would be also depends on which dialect of English you speak.

[eyeballmassage.livejournal.com]

i have taken one year of university-level russian and i speak american english. i use robert-collins for french and oxford for spanish, so i think i'll choose one of those, probably harper-collins. thank you! maybe the müller and a separate russian grammar would be my best bet, though

[spiderhood.livejournal.com]

The best one is Muller's dictionary (New English Dictionary or something like that, I can fetch you its full name if needed). English-Russian version has already been around for a couple of years, and Russian-English is somewhat newer. They are both reeeally good, however. At least if you seek English and not American English, that is. I'm sure you can find them somewhere on the web, but I wouldn't know, for I personally prefer the old style hard cover dictionaries (which you can get, too - ozon.ru is a good source).

Other popular unabridged dictionaries are Oxford and Katzner, both are astonishingly bad if you start using them often enough. The Oxford one contains tons of mostly useless Russian words (archaisms, obscenities, etc), the latter is too US-slang-oriented in the English part and excruciatingly brief (most of items contain one or two translations).

As for navigating, there's usually one text box to print your words in, one button to click on, a lot of useless menus and banners no-one ever bothers to read, and the rest can be safely assumed to be the translation (I use that approach with Greek and Japanese dictionaries, and those languages are more fluently spoken by a cow than by me). The on-line dictionary I use occasionally (I believe it's the fastest one) is
http://lingvo.yandex.ru/en .

[eyeballmassage.livejournal.com]

i also prefer hardcover dictionaries - online dictionaries always feel so "unverified" to me (though hardcover ones often are too- i can think of multiple occasions my french dictionary has made me say things that no one could understand). i speak american english, though i think i have a decent grasp on terms that aren't the same between british english and american english. thank you for all the information!

[apollotiger.livejournal.com]

You don't even need the yandex in there anymore; http://lingvo.ru/ works.

[spiderhood.livejournal.com]

Thanks! Good to know, I'll try that one.

[heresybythought.livejournal.com]

For the internet, I normally use http://multitran.ru . It's in Russian, but it's pretty obvious where the box to type the word is.

Paper, I highly reccomend Kenneth Katzner's dictionary, if you speak American English. It's the only dictionary written for American English. Otherwise, Oxford is pretty good.

This isn't a grammar guide, persay, but http://starling.rinet.ru/morpho.htm will give you all the morphological varients of a word if you type it in.

If you look in a Russian-Russian online dictionary, like http://megakm.ru/ojigov, they do show how to use a particular word in a sentence, but I don't think it would help if you're a really new beginner.

[joliecanard.livejournal.com]

Multitran also gives all case forms/verb conjugations when you click on the word (when it's the word being looked up, that is)

Multitran.ru is a god among dictionaries.