THL Tibetan Translation Tool Dictionary

The THL Tibetan Translation Tool dictionary from the Tibetan & Himalayan Library has become a de facto standard tool for taking any Tibetan text material and produce a quick rough list of statements and words when doing initial translations. There's also a standalone version using the Java runtime but I have had issues using it for a while. Most of us use the online version as today Internet access is available just anywhere, and with decent to good speed.

The tool has dictionaries from most contemporary collections of dictionaries out there, rywiki, Valby, Hopkins et rest. Most of us just toggle on all the dictionaries for lookup purposes. This means there's quite a selection to look at.

Another nice touch is that you could type either Wylie or Tibetan Unicode (UTF-8) into the search field for search purposes.

Now, some of the entries returned might be combined structures with an ending particle, or just a Sanskrit term with no further break-down. That means you need to refine parts of the search to unbundle such search results.

Another example where you need to use critical thinking is where a term is defined half-way. For example if you do a search on ཏིང་ངེ་འཛིན་གྱི་དབང་བསྐུར་ you will actually get back ཏིང་ངེ་འཛིན་གྱི་དབང་ -  power of meditative stabilization and བསྐུར་ bestowing. Actually here this term is samadhi empowerment where དབང་བསྐུར་ (empowerment) was not included.

I have it always as a browser shortcut, as my left-most icon, as I use this tool quite a lot. Here's a hint, there's a URL that does not show all the graphics and is more clean as well loads faster, this is the link . This is useful for example for mobile phones, or slower network connections.

There are ways to extend the dictionaries, but you need to ask around for the sources and know how to build Java code. Also, means this is just for a standalone version then.

Don't forget to install the Tibetan Machine fonts, link available at the web site. Then the results are also rendered in Tibetan.