¡Señor Dave! ¿Cómo puedo agregar soporte para español a la aplicación de Diccionario en MacOS 13? [translation: How do I add Spanish language support to the Dictionary app on my Mac system?]
Thanks for your question. Fortunately, I have enough knowledge of Spanish to figure out your question, but, of course, there are plenty of translation tools available nowadays too. Indeed, while it can’t manage full sentences, the Dictionary app that’s part of MacOS can also help with translation. Not only that, but it does an elegant job and has a typical Mac user interface too. And didja know it’s one of the best ways to explore Wikipedia?
Far more important is that the Dictionary program is also tightly integrated into the overall Mac experience, so when you look for a word definition from just about any Mac program – even on Web pages in your favorite browser – it’s going to use Dictionary, though the interface will be slightly different. While the default doesn’t include other language support it turns out that you can tweak the settings and add support for dozens of languages, from Chinese to Russian, German to Spanish, and much more.
LOOK UP A WORD IN DICTIONARY
To start out, I’m going to look up the Latin phrase vox populi in Dictionary. To do that I simply type in the word (or, in this case, phrase):
Ah, it does mean what I thought, so I am indeed using it correctly. Notice that this is using the default English dictionary and that Dictionary is also offering me easy access to English Thesaurus, Apple, Wikipedia, and French – English. Those are accessed with a click, so I can just as easily look up the same phrase in Wikipedia:
You can see that Dictionary has parsed all the other matches on Wikipedia and offered them on the left side to make navigation simple. The page itself is fully rendered as it would be in Safari or another browser, including images, making it a surprisingly slick interface for exploring Wikipedia. So much so that I’m a bit surprised there’s not a “Wikipedia” app that is simply this program!
A HANDY TRICK TO ENLARGE THE TYPE
Finding that the definition or other information is shown in an overly small font? Turns out you can easily increase the font size by clicking on the “>>” icon just to the left of the search box:
You can also step through your Dictionary search history with Back/Forward if you’re curious. But what about adding Spanish language support?
ADD LANGUAGE SUPPORT TO MAC DICTIONARY
In the Dictionary program, choose Dictionary > Settings… from the menubar. You’ll see a long list of available dictionary sources:
Here’s where you can get rid of some that you might never use – like the Thesaurus – and find other language dictionaries that you would like to add, like Spanish. In fact, scroll down and there are two different English/Spanish dictionaries available:
The two choices are Diccionario General de la Lengua Española Vox and Gran Diccionario Oxford – Español. The difference is that the former is a dictionary in Spanish that is focused on definitions while the latter includes translation info between Spanish and English. I’ll choose the latter, as shown, and close the window.
BEFORE I DO, however, notice the pronunciation options at the very bottom. These are to do with how Dictionary shows the pronunciation of English words. The choices are Diactirical (as shown earlier) or IPA, the International Phonetic Alphabet. If you only know “IPA” as a style of beer, I’d suggest you leave it as “Diacritical”, the default.
Now that we’ve added the Spanish-English dictionary, let’s give it a test…
LOOK UP A SPANISH WORD IN DICTIONARY
Let’s look up “cantina” in Dictionary now. This is a word that’s defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, so it works with “English” chosen:
This time, however, notice the line of dictionaries has changed: No thesaurus, and French – English has been replaced by Spanish – English. A click on that and here’s the Gran Diccionario Oxford – Español definition of cantina:
This is much more helpful, including the gender of the word, to help you avoid awkward phrases like “el cantina” (it should be “la cantina”), and lots more useful and interesting information too.
DICTIONARY LOOKUP IN MULTIPLE LANGUAGES
Jumping to a Web browser, note that by changing dictionaries, it’s also made the built-in Dictionary extension more useful. Now it can pick the correct source for the best possible results. If I look up an English word like “caching”, for example, MacOS 13 will show the definition from its English dictionary along with some Spanish information, as appropriate.
If I Control-Click on the word “caching” in a browser article, then choose “look up [word]”, here’s the result:
But if I do exactly the same thing with a Spanish word, notice it skips the “English” section and shows just the Spanish – English information:
That’s it. Surprisingly easy. Eso es todo lo que tienes que hacer para agregar soporte para el idioma español al programa de Diccionario en tu Mac. Buena suerte, y no dudes en hacerme más preguntas sobre Mac si surgen.
Pro Tip: I’ve been writing about the Mac since the very first system was released. Heck, I started my computing career on an Apple II. Please check out my extensive Mac Help Library while you’re here on the site. Thanks!