Online Idioms/Metaphors Dictionary

[linguaholic]

I was wondering if any of you ever came across something like a online dictionary for idioms / metaphors? Of course it is possible to find some idioms / metaphors in regular dictionaries but they usually provide just some easy ones and especially only short ones. But what about whole phrases? The only online dictionary that comes to my mind that can actually (sometimes) translate this kind of phrase (idioms/metaphors/metonyms) is linguee.com because it actually provides translations for whole phrases (and always shows you the results in the actual context). The context I am talking about is usually sentences / paragraphs. So in fact, the dictionary is based on parallel corpora gathered from many different internet sources, such as documents from the UN and so on. (The UN has tons of parallel documents for all the official UN languages). 

So, if you have NOT come across such a thing as a online dictionary for idioms/metaphors, would you think such a thing would be useful? Would you use it on a regular basis? I'm curious to hear what you think about it.

 

[anna3101]

It would be useful, yes, especially for translators. Sometimes you just can't find the right equivalent for some idiom and you feel like banging your head against the wall. If you're lucky, you can find some materials online (I remember using some sites where people compared Russian idioms and their English equivalents). But if you work with some rare/unpopular language, then it's getting quite hard.

Sometimes you can find some useful things on bab.la (I think they are also using some official documents to compare the same phrase in different languages).