Langenscheidt is a privately held German publishing company, specialising in language resource literature. As well as producing monolingual dictionaries, Langenscheidt also produces bilingual dictionaries and travel phrase-books, as well as maps and atlases.
Langenscheidt has language-to-language dictionaries in many languages, including, but not limited to: English, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Greek, Ancient Greek, Latin, Arabic, Chinese and Croatian, and in varying sizes, ranging from small travel pocket dictionaries to large desk sized ones.
The structure for most Langenscheidt dictionaries is the same. Most pocket dictionaries include around 55,000 references designed for tourists or people studying beginning or intermediate foreign languages, while larger desk sized dictionaries include around 220,000 references. After the two languages' references conclude, grammatical assistance appears in the Appendix section, including helpful abbreviations, geographical regions, currency values, temperature conversions, and numerical values.
Recently, Langenscheidt became the exclusive distributor of the Green Michelin travel guides and the Red Michelin hotel and restaurant guides. Langenscheidt also distributes Forbes Travel Guides. Overall, the Langenscheidt Publishing Group offers over 3,000 international street maps, road maps, atlases, travel guides, language-learning guides, and bilingual dictionaries.
Langenscheidt also owns Berlitz Publishing and Insight Guides.
The Langenscheidt Publishing Group was also a major map publisher in the United States, encompassing former privately held regional map publishers Arrow (Boston area), Hagstrom (New York area), Patton (Philadelphia area), ADC (Washington DC/Baltimore/Mid-Atlantc area), Creative Sales (CSC) (Chicago area), and Trakker (Florida). They also have national and international coverage with American Map Company (AMC) and Hammond Map respectively, which absorbed the assets of General Drafting in 1992. Langenscheidt's map division was sold to Universal Map, an affiliate of Kappa Publishing Group, in 2010.