Ultralingua French-English App Reviews

This is not formatted well for the iPad. Its very sluggish and the screen space is not efficiently used up. When you tap the help button you cant navigate out of it. You have to close the entire app and start over if you want to loo, up another word. I dont reccommend this for iPad.

The best dictionary.

Need to add audio pronunciation!

Restricted range of definitions for words that have multiple uses or connotations. First word I looked up (panache) was given the wrong gender.

Not perfect, but a good, solid resource to have while reading French. I have a large, paper dictionary that is better for multiple meanings and slang, but I have found this Ultralingua dictionary to be very useful.

The framework of this app is very good – its been through many iterations, and on many platforms: Ive purchased it and re-purchased it for Newton, Palm, MacOS, OS X, and Windows over the years, in addition to this iOS version. It served me well when I was a beginner, but now, it just doesnt have enough words, nor are the definitions nuanced enough for me to trust that Ill use or understand a word correctly. If you are a beginner, it may be the right choice for you, but please read on. The Larousse bilingual is a better dictionary (and is much less expensive), but that app isnt as good as this one. Ultralinguas own FR-EN Collins offering is a better bilingual than this, and uses the same excellent dictionary engine as this, but is much more expensive. For a similar level of investment, one can purchase Le Petit Robert for iPad – there is no better one-volume monolingual dictionary currently available in print or in digital form than the Robert. Alternatively, Roberts Dixel is also a superb monolingual dictionary – less scholarly than Le Petit, but including more proper nouns – and runs both on iPhones and iPads. (If youre not yet at the level that a first-rate monolingual makes sense for you, then this dictionary may, in fact, be just right for you. Id still encourage you to stretch a bit by trying the Larousse bilingual, however.) My compromise is to grumble about how clunky the Larousse bilingual is, use it only when Im stuck, and mostly use Le Petit Robert, or the Dixel if my iPhone is the device at hand. In the final analysis, however, it comes down to whether the underlying dictionary will support me. In reading an article in Le Monde yesterday, for an example, I needed to look up 6 words. Only one of them was present in this dictionary, and the proposed definition was insufficient. In contrast, all 6 had good definitions in the bilingual Larousse, and in Le Petit Robert. None of those words was arcane; the Sunday Le Monde magazine section is written, after all, for a wide (but Francophone) audience. Theres almost never a situation for which this Ultralingua bilingual remains the best choice for me. A guiding principle one hears in ones study of Software Engineering is the desirability of designing for "a low threshold, and a high ceiling." This dictionary provides the first, but not the second.

I had just installed this app when I got a notice from them that an upgraded version is now available. I only had to pay the same price that I just paid to get it!!!!!! I was not given the choice to buy the upgraded app first!

With iPhone 5 and iOS 6, the contextuel menu stopped working. Its an iOS 6 issue as its the same with my iPad 3 I just updated to iOS 6. One of the best feature of this dictionnary just disappeared. Ultralingua MUST address the problem! Its time to work on an update! Your are already late guys...

Ultralingua is very lackluster overall. I often find that key expressions are missing, and the app is quite buggy. In version 1.5.2 the screen would often remain blank instead of showing the correct definition, and following the 1.5.3 update the app has crashed every time I tap the search bar to start typing. I would expect this from a free dictionary, but this is really unacceptable given my investment.

I also have the German & Spanish dictionaries from Ultralingua, and cant believe that with this update, the landscape mode is gone from all three. Frankly Id much rather do without the latest improvements but at least be able to use this on my iPad. The worst part about it is that even in portrait mode, when you try to enter any text for search, the keyboard that pops up is in… landscape mode, which blocks the field where youre supposed to enter the text. Thus rendering this app TOTALLY useless. Please fix this PRONTO!

Sadly disappointed in this app. The conjugation feature is interesting but the dictionary is lacking many phrasal verbs needed for translation purchases. Too expensive for what it is. Youd be better off buying a 2 or 3 dollar app.

This is a wonderful app, easy to use and great interface. Get this app and you will not regret it.

The Collins Ultralingua dictionary content and new user interface overall is great. The one major, major minus - They need to bring back more easily identifiable icons. The flags worked really well for quick easy access to the right dictionary. Can barely discern the difference now. Also, Do not bother to download the Ultralingua bookshelf. It is just a marketing tool for Ultralinguas benefit not their users. It forces an extra click to get to the dictionary you need while presenting you with needless commercials and social media options.

Why fix something that wasnt broken to begin with? I dont like the new look, its confusing to navigate.

This app has really helped me learn French. Ive been using it almost daily for a few years, and I love the new layout! Definitions, conjugations and expressions all in one place. I really like the simple navigation and easy to read font. Thanks for the beautiful dictionary and awesome update! Great app.

The new interface is less attractive and less useful to browse. It looks like someone decided they could save money by putting a couple of menu items that couldve been done as buttons next to a copy of the iPhone user interface and calling it an iPad app.

This Ian a great app! Love it!

As a student and teacher of French for more than 50 years Ive found this to be the best tool available for use both on the spot and in a more studious, relaxed situation. I have used it extensively over a period of years throughout Europe, Haiti, and at home with complete satisfaction.

The old version of the app was so much easier to use. This new update seems very elementary and is just not as good as the earlier version.

Latest 2.4.1 (October 17) update for iOS 7 crashes on launch - app wont open at all (and Im running latest iOS 7 version on a new iPhone 5s). Avoid updating until this gets fixed. Update: re-downloaded a few hours later and now seems to work