Ordbogen.com

Ordbogen.com
Type Private
Founded December 19, 2001[1]
Headquarters Odense, Denmark
Key people Bjarni Norddahl
(Director, CEO),[2]
Henning Bergenholtz
(Director of ASB Center for Lexicography)[3][4]
Industry Reference/Education
Slogan(s) Danmarks Største Online Ordbog
("Denmark's Largest Online Dictionary")
Website Ordbogen.com
Alexa rank 36,510 (worldwide)
141 (Denmark)
Type of site Dictionary
Advertising none
Available in Danish
Launched August 2003
November 1, 2006[5] (relaunch)

Ordbogen.com (Danish: the dictionary) is a commercial online dictionary owned by the company Ordbogen A/S,[6] based in Odense, Denmark, and geared toward Danish speakers and those studying the Danish language.

It is a commercial service which allows users to access the entire standard Danish dictionary, as well as translation dictionaries from Danish into English, German, Swedish, French, and Spanish. One has to pay to use the full dictionaries, however, the website's online search will give two searches each day for free.

According to the Alexa Internet rankings, Ordbogen.com was the most popular online dictionary in Denmark in 2005, and was the most extensive, with over 110,000 entries in its Danish dictionary as of November 2006.[4] Ordbogen.com is the 141st most popular website visited by Danish internet users as of April 2009.[7]

History

The Ordbogen.com headquarters in Odense.

Den Danske Netordbog ("The Danish Internet Dictionary"),[8] a simple dictionary service for Danish speakers, was started in 2001 by the Aarhus School of Business' Center for Lexicography (Danish: Center for Leksikografi), and quickly became the most popular online dictionary in Denmark according to TDC A/S.[4]

In August 2003, Ordbogen was first launched as a translation dictionary, giving definitions of words from Danish to English and vice versa. The project was created by Cool Systems ApS (known as Ordbogen ApS today) publishing editor Jørgen Rohde's dictionary. At this time, the Danish dictionary and the translation dictionaries were completely separate entities owned and supervised by different people.

Originally funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture, Den Danske Netordbog was shut down in August 2005 due to a lack of funds.[4] Ordbogen.com partnered with the Aarhus School of Business and Den Danske Netordbog was relaunched on November 1, 2006 on the Ordbogen website.[5]

In the summer of 2007, Ordbogen.com introduced search capabilities from Danish to German and German to Danish, and in 2008 added Swedish, French and Spanish as well. The current Director and CEO of Ordbogen.com is Bjarni Norddahl,[2] who co-founded the company with Michael Walther in 2001.

According to their own references, Ordbogen.com has been used and is recommended by a number of Danish companies and media outlets, including Amnesty International Danmark,[9] GlaxoSmithKline Danmark,[10] and national broadcaster Danmarks Radio's news department, which has used Ordbogen.com exclusively for their translation needs since 2005.[11]

External links

References