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With over 110 dictionaries available for 29 languages, mobile dictionaries by Paragon Software Group have been developed to satisfy a wide range of language professionals and learners across the world. The company’s SlovoEd brand of top-quality monolingual and bilingual dictionaries contain reference content from the world’s most distinguished language publishers, including Merriam-Webster Inc., Oxford University Press, PONS GmbH and Chambers Harrap Publishers LTD, to name a few. With some of the dictionaries containing up to 400,000 word entries per app, how are those volumes of reference content stored and accessed on small, portable devices? read more About Dictionaries for Mac OS X and A Pack of Spanish Dictionaries for blackberry

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The applications are all powered by Paragon’s proprietary SlovoEd compression technology, says Boris Zhukov, Chief Technology Officer at Paragon Software Group. The SlovoEd engine compresses lengthy dictionary content and converts it to a compact electronic format that requires minimal memory space to store on mobile devices, which is good with the average user storing up to 40 apps on topped out 1 GB internal memory. The company claims that the engine enables their applications to rank among the fastest in definition lookup, in addition to powering a range of additional built-in learning tools and features like sound modules, learning tools and complex searches that aren’t found in many other dictionary apps.

“All our dictionaries are based on SlovoEd technology,” says Zhukov. “The engine is the same for any of our offerings – whether it’s MS Windows, Mac OS, online or any mobile platform, our dictionaries are all powered by SlovoEd.”

This is no small feat. Many developers will tell you that different platforms have different abilities, development techniques and hardware resources, making cross-platform programming highly complex. The SlovoEd engine, Zhukov says, has excellent portability, meaning that it works on different platforms and different CPUs – including PowerPC, DragonBall, Intel, ARM and SH3, among others – and uses both native and managed programming languages. In addition, all Paragon dictionary databases have the same format and can be used on different platforms with different programming languages, including Palm OS, Symbian, Windows Mobile, bada, C/C++, Android, Blackberry, MIDP, Java and Objective C.

“In my experience at Paragon,” Zhukov says, “the weakest platform I’ve encountered was Casio Pocket Viewer with a limited 64 KB of RAM for all applications – and we were able to create a dictionary for it using SlovoEd.”

Zhukov states that the company’s experience in producing thousands of reference apps for the widest range of world languages, devices and operating systems – in addition to using information inherent in language and dictionary structure – were taken into consideration when creating SlovoEd.

“To create a better product, we developed an algorithm of word form alterations,” says Zhukov, “which might be referred to as ‘conjugation’ in other applications, but our technology is more advanced and has a much broader use.”

Zhukov uses the example of Paragon’s English database, with more than one million words and word forms, that weighs less than 300 KB due to this blend of algorithms and concepts. The database not only contains “academic” information about words, but also enables word recognition, prompting the application to bring up the correct word definition even when the word is written in non-basic form, such as with irregular verbs or plural forms. The same functionality exists for Paragon Spanish, French and Russian databases, and the company is currently developing its German database.

The SlovoEd compression engine also allows simultaneous use of Paragon dictionary databases, meaning that users are not required to run different applications to access different dictionaries. For most platforms, the functionality of the company’s dictionaries can be extended by adding additional dictionary databases. By installing the Merriam-Webster English-French dictionary, for example, and adding another dictionary, like Merriam-Webster Collegiate or Advanced Learners dictionaries, both dictionaries can be accessed to search definitions simultaneously.

“Our ‘merge module’ that can merge several dictionaries into one list utilizes low memory and CPU consumption, and doesn’t require any preparation process to use it,” says Zhukov. “Most of our competitors don’t have this functionality.”

Wherever possible, Paragon integrates its applications deeply into the system, which allows translations from mail, book reader applications or the Internet, not just within the application itself. This flexibility gives Paragon’s dictionaries a native feel, allowing users to become comfortable translating and looking up definitions in a wide range of scenarios.

“Our compression technology was born in the age of Palm OS and other devices with low memory and calculation power, compared to the current state,” says Zhukov. “We continue the process of evolving our engine to better power apps that can help people all over the world learn and work more productively.”

Paragon has constantly updated its SlovoEd technology, making changes to fit leading-edge devices and to keep pace with technological advances in mobile computing. SlovoEd was initially created in 2000 as a very simple engine, but has been developed to include new database tools and modules that have kept the company’s leading edge in reference applications. Paragon is currently in the final stages of developing a new generation of dictionary engine with the same advantages as SlovoEd, but with more flexibility and power. For users, the switch should enable more features and speed, and for Paragon, the new engine will help the company produce products that enable even more people to access elite reference information in an instant, wherever they are in the world.