Datasets:

divinetribe
/

es-en-offline-dictionary

Spanish	What it literally says	What it actually means
donde el diablo perdió el poncho	where the devil lost his poncho	in the middle of nowhere
tener pájaros en la cabeza	to have birds in your head	to have bats in the belfry
buscar tres pies al gato	to look for three legs on a cat	to look for trouble
tener mente de pez	to have a fish brain	to have a memory like a sieve
un ojo de la cara	an eye from your face	an arm and a leg
no tener donde caerse muerto	to not have a place to drop dead	to not have a penny
en boca cerrada no entran moscas	flies don't enter a closed mouth	silence is golden
tener el mono	to have the monkey	to have withdrawal symptoms
coser y cantar	to sew and sing	piece of cake
más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo	the devil knows more from being old than from being the devil	experience is the best teacher

Google Translate will give you the middle column. This dictionary gives you the right one.

That's why it exists: 6,056 idiomatic phrases where the whole is not the sum of the parts, backed by 268,622 word-level translations for everything else. All in a 4 MB gzip that runs anywhere — phone, laptop, Raspberry Pi, airplane seat 23C with no WiFi.

What's in the file

One file: es_final_with_rules.json.gz (4.2 MB compressed, ~25 MB decompressed)

{
  "version": "3.1-merged",
  "dictionary": { ... },   // 268,622 word/sentence translations
  "phrases": { ... },      // 6,056 idiomatic phrases
  "rules": { ... }         // translation guidelines + glossary
}

The dictionary — 268,622 entries

Everything from single words to full contextual sentences, each with an English translation and part-of-speech tag:

"abandonar":     { "translation": "to abandon", "pos": "VERB" },
"abogado":       { "translation": "lawyer", "pos": "NOUN" },
"sangre fría":   { "translation": "cold blood", "pos": "NOUN" },
"loco de atar":  { "translation": "stark raving mad", "pos": "ADJ" }

Many entries go beyond single words — conjugated verbs, prepositional phrases, regional variations, and full sentences with natural context:

"a decir verdad, esto es un poco demasiado picante para mi.": {
    "translation": "to tell you the truth, this is a little too spicy for me.",
    "pos": "UNKNOWN"
}

By the numbers:

Part of speech	Entries	Flavor
Sentences & expressions	213,954	The bulk — contextual translations, multi-word
Verbs	22,299	Including conjugations and verb phrases
Nouns	21,262	People, places, things, concepts
Adjectives	9,133	Descriptive, emotional, physical
Adverbs	703	How, when, where
Everything else	1,471	Pronouns, interjections, determiners, conjunctions

The idioms — 6,056 phrases that'll make you smile

This is the part Google gets wrong. A curated collection of Spanish expressions, proverbs, and slang — the stuff that makes a language a language and not just vocabulary with grammar.

Animals say the darndest things:

Spanish	English	Literally...
estar como el perro y el gato	to fight like cats and dogs	to be like the dog and the cat
gato con guantes no caza ratones	you can't be too careful	a cat with gloves doesn't catch mice
perro ladrador, poco mordedor	his bark is worse than his bite	barking dog, little biter
hablar como un loro	to talk nonstop	to talk like a parrot
trabajar como un burro	to work like a dog	to work like a donkey
tener más vidas que un gato	to have nine lives	to have more lives than a cat
hacer el mono	to monkey around	to do the monkey
tener un hambre de lobo	to be starving	to have a wolf's hunger
travieso como un mono	mischievous as a monkey	—
ser un gallina	to be a chicken	to be a hen

The devil gets around:

Spanish	English
ir como alma que lleva el diablo	to go like a bat out of hell
donde el diablo perdió el poncho	in the back of beyond
tener el diablo en el cuerpo	to be full of mischief
sin encomendarse a dios ni al diablo	without thinking twice
el diablo las carga	speak of the devil
más sabe el diablo por viejo que por diablo	experience is the best teacher
mandar al diablo	to tell someone to go to hell

The heart knows:

Spanish	English
ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente	out of sight, out of mind
corazón de oro	heart of gold
corazón de piedra	heart of stone
robar el corazón	to steal one's heart
dar un vuelco el corazón	heart skips a beat
hacer de tripas corazón	to pluck up courage
hablar con el corazón en la mano	to speak from the heart
revista del corazón	gossip magazine

And the rest of living:

Spanish	English
echar leña al fuego	to add fuel to the fire
ponerse como la grana	to turn red as a beet
hacerse de oro	to strike it rich
dormir como un lirón	to sleep like a log
no pegar ojo	to not sleep a wink
en un abrir y cerrar de ojos	in the blink of an eye
tener un tornillo flojo	to have a screw loose
tirar la toalla	to throw in the towel
pedir el oro y el moro	to ask for the moon
helar la sangre	to make one's blood run cold
empezar la casa por el tejado	to put the cart before the horse
matar dos pájaros de un tiro	to kill two birds with one stone
sacar las castañas del fuego	to pull someone's chestnuts out of the fire

Where this came from

This dictionary powers the offline translation feature in RealTime AI Camera — a free iOS app that does 601-class object detection, live OCR, and Spanish→English translation, all on-device, no internet.

The dictionary was compiled from multiple open sources, merged, deduplicated, POS-tagged, and expanded with contextual sentences. The idiom collection was curated separately because idiomatic phrases are exactly where word-by-word translation falls apart — and that's exactly when you need a dictionary most.

The goal was specific: a dictionary that's complete enough for real-world camera text (signs, menus, documents, labels, handwritten notes), small enough to ship inside an iOS app (4 MB), and fast enough for real-time use (key-value lookup, not neural inference).

It's a lookup table. No GPU needed. No model. No beam search. Sub-millisecond on any device made in the last decade.

Use it

Python

import gzip, json

with gzip.open("es_final_with_rules.json.gz", "rt", encoding="utf-8") as f:
    data = json.load(f)

dictionary = data["dictionary"]
phrases = data["phrases"]

# Always check phrases first — they catch idioms that
# word-by-word lookup would mangle
text = "tirar la toalla"
if text in phrases:
    print(phrases[text])          # "to throw in the towel"
elif text in dictionary:
    print(dictionary[text]["translation"])

# Single word
print(dictionary["abogado"]["translation"])   # "lawyer"

Swift (iOS / macOS)

import Foundation

guard let url = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "es_final_with_rules", withExtension: "json.gz"),
      let compressed = try? Data(contentsOf: url),
      let json = try? (compressed as NSData).decompressed(using: .zlib),
      let root = try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: json) as? [String: Any],
      let dictionary = root["dictionary"] as? [String: [String: String]],
      let phrases = root["phrases"] as? [String: String]
else { return }

// "to have a screw loose"
print(phrases["tener un tornillo flojo"] ?? "not found")

// "lawyer"
print(dictionary["abogado"]?["translation"] ?? "not found")

For the full production implementation with grammar rules and smart fallbacks, see SpanishTranslationEngine.swift.

JavaScript

const zlib = require("zlib");
const fs = require("fs");

const data = JSON.parse(
  zlib.gunzipSync(fs.readFileSync("es_final_with_rules.json.gz"))
);

const { dictionary, phrases } = data;

// "in the middle of nowhere"
console.log(phrases["donde el diablo perdió el poncho"]);

// "lawyer"
console.log(dictionary["abogado"].translation);

License

GPL-3.0 — same license as the parent project.

Commercial licensing available for App Store / Play Store distribution. Contact Matt Macosko via nicedreamzwholesale.com.

Spanish-English Offline Dictionary

268,622 translations. 6,056 idioms. 4 MB. No internet. No excuses.

The problem with translating Spanish word-by-word