database design for dictionary application

Question

Currently I\'d like to develop dictionary application for mobile device. The dictionary itself use offline file/database to translate the word. it just translates for two la

Answer 1

At least it for each translation there are a few translation possibilities depending on the context. if you like to do a bidirectional dictionary for two languages you need at least three tables:

ENGLISH
ID | WORD
1  | 'dictionary'

GERMAN
ID | WORD
1  | 'lexikon'
2  | 'wörterbuch'

TRANSLATION_EN_DE
ID_EN | ID_DE
1     | 1
1     | 2

The first two tables are containing all the words that are known in that language and the bidirectional mapping is done by the 3rd mapping table. this is a common n:n mapping case. with two more tables you're always able to add a new language into you're dicitionary. If you're doing it with one table you'll have multiple definitions for a single word thus no normalized db.

you can also merge your language tables into a single table defining the words language by another column (referencing a language table). in that case you'll need a 2-column index for the language and the word itsself.