Aufschlag

17:26 May 26, 2016 

Another interesting fact from the LEO page:
"Noch im Gründungsjahr übernahm Peter Kai Wimmer die Wörterbuchpflege von Achim Jung [one person, yay!], bei der er in den Folgejahren durch [a few others...] unterstützt wurde. [...] Vergabe von Wortlisten zur Korrektur an freiwillige [Wiki-like, I guess] Helfer [...] bereits in diesen Jahren entwickelte sich die so nutzvolle Symbiose zwischen dem Wörterbuch-Team und den Nutzern, die viele privat gesammelte Wortschätze [personal archives!]..."
http://dict.leo.org/pages/about/ende/history_de.html

Don't get me wrong: I am not trying to denigrate the work that they or others have done. But it's not a dictionary, it's a database containing a chaotic collection of translations. It's grown to 800K words and is thus hardly manageable anymore. I don't think their aim is to provide an accurate translation, but to supply people with a list of words that can put them on the right track, which is fine.

KudoZ, however, is full of questions asking for accurate rendering, so I don't think quoting surch sources will help anyone's cause. Frankly, I had never seen you quoting these sources until recently, which caught me a little off guard.

Best wishes

17:15 May 26, 2016 

I won't go into detail here regarding normal bilingual dictionaries. If you don't already have suspicions when these books only show one individual or a small group as having worked on it, then I can't convince you. In my experience, a lot of words (especially in industry-specific dictionaries) have essentially been created out of thin air.

I call the online versions "alleged dictionaries" because their purpose used to be something completely different. Take LEO, for example:
"LEO ging aus einem Verbund von FTP-Software- und Datenarchiven hervor, der [...] an der TU München und der LMU München von interessierten Studenten aufgebaut worden war. Das damalige Ziel war, [...] ein großes Archiv aufzubauen, das thematisch gegliedert ist und dessen einzelne Bereiche von Archivaren gepflegt und aktuell gehalten werden."

And Wiki goes on to explain:
"Daneben entwickelten Studenten in ihrer Freizeit verschiedene Dienste, von denen heute das Wörterbuch den herausragenden Teil darstellt."

This also seems to refute the wild claim that LEO was once a university dictionary. Do you put your faith in what students created in their leisure time?

17:03 May 26, 2016 

I said "LEO and others are certainly not appropriate sources to quote"

Typically, I agree with the first answer given. Only if there is a good enough reason to disregard the first reply will I choose one posted at a later time.

There are three reasons this can happen:

1) There is no source given whatsoever. May influence my agreement, but doesn't have to (depends on the term and the type of question asked).

2) The translation is correct, but does not match the context, e.g., words that you wouldn't use in a certain field or under certain circumstances (I think it's safe to say "premium" [insurance] and "supplement" [hotel rooms/retirement money] belong into that category)

3) Bilingual dictionaries (Langenscheidt, PONS, industry dics) or alleged dictionaries (LEO, dict.cc, etc.) are the only source to back up a word choice. In my experience, most bilingual dictionaries are only useful for simple words or - as is true for alledged dictionaries - to get to the right solution by narrowing down a search.

16:32 May 26, 2016 

Why is a dictionary not an appropriate source to quote? Just wondered.

05:00 May 26, 2016 

RE: Your second question

"billed with a markup to the Austrian subsidiary of X" would be fine, IMO.

Compare:
http://multiplestates.co.uk/handbook/how-we-work/billing/
http://www.billquick.co.uk/archioffice2012/help/Projects_Bil...
http://trafficlive.com/agency-management-software/billing-an...
http://uplandsoftware.com/tenrox/glossary/cost-plus-billing/