Translator 3.0: Dictionary Lookup

Άρθρο
08/28/2024

Provides alternative translations for a word and a few idiomatic phrases. Each translation has a part-of-speech and a list of back-translations. The back-translations enable a user to understand the translation in context. The Dictionary Example operation includes example uses of each translation pair.

Request URL

Send a POST request to:

https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/dictionary/lookup?api-version=3.0

See Virtual Network Support for Translator service selected network and private endpoint configuration and support.

Request parameters

Request parameters passed on the query string are:

Query Parameter	Description
api-version	Required parameter. Version of the API requested by the client. Value must be `3.0`
from	Required parameter. Specifies the language of the input text. The source language must be one of the supported languages included in the `dictionary` scope.
to	Required parameter. Specifies the language of the output text. The target language must be one of the supported languages included in the `dictionary` scope.

Request headers include:

Headers	Description
Authentication headers	Required request header. See Authentication.
Content-Type	Required request header. Specifies the content type of the payload. Possible values are: `application/json`.
Content-Length	Optional. The length of the request body.
X-ClientTraceId	Optional. A client-generated GUID to uniquely identify the request. You can omit this header if you include the trace ID in the query string using a query parameter named `ClientTraceId`.

Request body

The body of the request is a JSON array. Each array element is a JSON object with a string property named Text, which represents the term to look up.

[
    {"Text":"fly"}
]

The following limitations apply:

The array can have at most 10 elements.
The text value of an array element can't exceed 100 characters including spaces.

Response body

A successful response is a JSON array with one result for each string in the input array. A result object includes the following properties:

normalizedSource: A string giving the normalized form of the source term. For example, if the request is JOHN, the normalized form is john. The content of this field becomes the input to lookup examples.
displaySource: A string giving the source term in a form best suited for end-user display. For example, if the input is JOHN, the display form reflects the usual spelling of the name: John.
translations: A list of translations for the source term. Each element of the list is an object with the following properties:
normalizedTarget: A string giving the normalized form of this term in the target language. This value should be used as input to lookup examples.
displayTarget: A string giving the term in the target language and in a form best suited for end-user display. Generally, this property only differs from the normalizedTarget in terms of capitalization. For example, a proper noun like Juan has normalizedTarget = "juan" and displayTarget = "Juan".
posTag: A string associating this term with a part-of-speech tag.

Tag name Description

ADJ Adjectives

ADV Adverbs

CONJ Conjunctions

DET Determiners

MODAL Verbs

NOUN Nouns

PREP Prepositions

PRON Pronouns

VERB Verbs

OTHER Other

As an implementation note, these tags are part-of-speech tagging the English side, and then taking the most frequent tag for each source/target pair. So if people frequently translate a Spanish word to a different part-of-speech tag in English, tags cab end up being wrong (with respect to the Spanish word).
confidence: A value between 0.0 and 1.0 that represents the "confidence" (or more accurately, "probability in the training data") of that translation pair. The sum of confidence scores for one source word can or can't sum to 1.0.
prefixWord: A string giving the word to display as a prefix of the translation. Currently, this property is the gendered determiner of nouns, in languages that have gender determiners. For example, the prefix of the Spanish word mosca is la, since mosca is a feminine noun in Spanish. This value is only dependent on the translation, and not on the source. If there's no prefix, it's the empty string.
backTranslations: A list of "back translations" of the target. For example, source words that the target can translate to. The list is guaranteed to contain the source word that was requested (for example, if the source word being looked up is fly, then fly is included in the backTranslations list). However, it isn't guaranteed to be in the first position, and often isn't. Each element of the backTranslations list is an object described by the following properties:
- normalizedText: A string giving the normalized form of the source term that is a back-translation of the target. This value should be used as input to lookup examples.
- displayText: A string giving the source term that is a back-translation of the target in a form best suited for end-user display.
- numExamples: An integer representing the number of examples that are available for this translation pair. Actual examples must be retrieved with a separate call to lookup examples. The number is mostly intended to facilitate display in a UX. For example, a user interface can add a hyperlink to the back-translation if the number of examples is greater than zero. Then the back-translation is shown as plain text if there are no examples. The actual number of examples returned by a call to lookup examples can be less than numExamples, because more filtering can be applied on the fly to remove "bad" examples.
- frequencyCount: An integer representing the frequency of this translation pair in the data. The main purpose of this field is to provide a user interface with a means to sort back-translations so the most frequent terms are first.
  
  Note
  
  If the term being looked-up does not exist in the dictionary, the response is 200 (OK) but the translations list is an empty list.

Tag name	Description
`ADJ`	Adjectives
`ADV`	Adverbs
`CONJ`	Conjunctions
`DET`	Determiners
`MODAL`	Verbs
`NOUN`	Nouns
`PREP`	Prepositions
`PRON`	Pronouns
`VERB`	Verbs
`OTHER`	Other

Examples

This example shows how to look up alternative translations in Spanish of the English term fly .

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/dictionary/lookup?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=es" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "[{'Text':'fly'}]"

The response body (abbreviated for clarity) is:

[
    {
        "normalizedSource":"fly",
        "displaySource":"fly",
        "translations":[
            {
                "normalizedTarget":"volar",
                "displayTarget":"volar",
                "posTag":"VERB",
                "confidence":0.4081,
                "prefixWord":"",
                "backTranslations":[
                    {"normalizedText":"fly","displayText":"fly","numExamples":15,"frequencyCount":4637},
                    {"normalizedText":"flying","displayText":"flying","numExamples":15,"frequencyCount":1365},
                    {"normalizedText":"blow","displayText":"blow","numExamples":15,"frequencyCount":503},
                    {"normalizedText":"flight","displayText":"flight","numExamples":15,"frequencyCount":135}
                ]
            },
            {
                "normalizedTarget":"mosca",
                "displayTarget":"mosca",
                "posTag":"NOUN",
                "confidence":0.2668,
                "prefixWord":"",
                "backTranslations":[
                    {"normalizedText":"fly","displayText":"fly","numExamples":15,"frequencyCount":1697},
                    {"normalizedText":"flyweight","displayText":"flyweight","numExamples":0,"frequencyCount":48},
                    {"normalizedText":"flies","displayText":"flies","numExamples":9,"frequencyCount":34}
                ]
            },
            //
            // ...list abbreviated for documentation clarity
            //
        ]
    }
]

This example shows what happens when the term being looked up doesn't exist for the valid dictionary pair.

curl -X POST "https://api.cognitive.microsofttranslator.com/dictionary/lookup?api-version=3.0&from=en&to=es" -H "X-ClientTraceId: 875030C7-5380-40B8-8A03-63DACCF69C11" -H "Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key: <client-secret>" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "[{'Text':'fly123456'}]"

Since the term isn't found in the dictionary, the response body includes an empty translations list.

[
    {
        "normalizedSource":"fly123456",
        "displaySource":"fly123456",
        "translations":[]
    }
]

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