English to Tamil Dictionary

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET staff on December 09, 2012

For those of you not in the know (and we're including ourselves in this), Tamil is a language spoken in South India and Northeast Sri-Lanka. English to Tamil Dictionary, as one might expect, aims to bridge the language divide by translating English words into their appropriate Tamil word or phrase. While we can't speak to its accuracy from the Tamil side, from an English-speaking standpoint, we found it to be a mixed bag in terms of its helpfulness.

English to Tamil Dictionary offers a pretty simple interface. It opens with a search bar and a list of "A" English words, such as abacus, abandon, abbreviate. Selecting a word takes you to a page where you can hear the word pronounced, which wasn't all that helpful. Honestly, if we didn't know the English word beforehand, we doubt we'd understand it after listening to the voice feature pronounce it. But users can see the Tamil meanings (written in Tamil script) for the English word, as well as any synonyms in English. To pull up a list of "B" words, just type the letter "B" into the search bar and it will display a long list of words, or you can spell out the complete word, which it may or may not include - the word lists are pretty ample, though. That's pretty much all there is to the app. An information icon appears in the right corner that includes developer info, but that's it. The FAQ, Feedback, and Features options took us nowhere.

If you're trying to learn English, we couldn't see English to Tamil Dictionary being used a primary language-learning tool, but it would work great as a supplement to a more robust language program or as a quick translation tool while traveling.