A Spanish dictionary has been part of a Spanish student's required books for a long time.

Over the years these books have become better. Today anyone can translate back and forth from English to Spanish.

Google has a Spanish dictionary. Its translation service can translate from many languages to many languages. One of them is Spanish. It translates any length of text. They aren't perfect but they're better than nothing.

For years on the Internet AltaVista and its Babel Fish have the market cornered on translation. A Spanish dictionary was included. That means translations from English to Spanish and vice versa. The problem with this site was at once something was translated from English to Spanish, translating it back into English would often significantly change it. Some people found this a useful feature. It could be used to rewrite something. But overall the translations weren't very accurate.

The Spanish dictionary at Google is quite different. Going from English to Spanish and then back results in the same text. This is better for the purpose of translation even though the re-write capability isn't present.

A translator isn't the only Spanish dictionary. Oxford's Spanish dictionary translates, but also offers pronunciation keys and definitions of English and Spanish words. For example, look up the word water. That's agua in Spanish. It's an odd word in that it's feminine, but becomes masculine when singular. Then the Oxford details many other words for water in different contexts. It's a very useful tool.

Looking up mother in the Spanish dictionary brings us the Spanish madre. Mimar is the transitive form. Transitive is like the word used in the sentence: she mothers me. But for mother tongue the Spanish use lengua materna.

Jacket can be found in the Spanish dictionary. The clothing item is chaqueta in Spanish. But sobrecubierta is a book jacket.

Oxford's Spanish dictionary ranks #1.