Best Glossary of Climbing and Mountaineering Terms

I’ve put together a list of some websites with glossary resources for mountaineering terms which I have found particularly useful. There are many more out there, but these are a good place to start….

Some of them are monolingual glossaries and others provide translations in other languages…Please let me know if you have any other resources which are handy for mountaineering translations and I can add them to the list!

Sierra Descents (English) - Nice list of mountaineering terms with clear explanations in English. Well organised.

Summit Post (English, Spanish, French, Italian, German) - In table form, this provides various translations for mountain terms, weather terms and gear terms in different tables.

Climbing Dictionary (English, French and Italian) - This page shows a table with the terms and their translations into the two other languages. It’s organised alphabetically and is handy because you can choose how it is presented, i.e. from English, from Italian or from French, by clicking on that language.

Kong Dictionary (Italian, English) - This is an exhaustive dictionary resource with all the terms arranged alphabetically in Italian with their English translations. Excellent.

Canada Rock Climbing (English, German, French, Québécois, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Polish, Slovak) Glossary with term explained in English followed by equivalent terms in other languages. Not all the terms are translated into all of the languages, but nevertheless it is useful to have explanations alongside the translation.

UK Climbing (English) - Glossary of terms with a light-hearted touch in the explanations. Also provides some notes about differences between American and British use of terms.

REI (English) - Glossary of rock climbing terms - good descriptions of technical terms and specific moves when climbing.

Rock and Ice Magazine (English) - Glossary of rock climbing terms. Also a great source of articles and videos about what’s going on in the climbing world.

Falesia.it (Italian, English, French, German and Spanish) - Good multilingual list of terms. Good to use together with other resources with more detailed definitions.

Montagna di Lombardia (Italian) - Nice monolingual Italian dictionary of relevant terms.

Sestogrado (Italian) - Monolingual glossary with short, sweet and clear explanations of various terms from ‘capocordata’ to ‘dulfer’.

Plus….another great bilingual link for mountaineering is the online magazine, Planet Mountain, with articles and news in both English and Italian.

For more details about how I can help with your translation project, get in touch and let’s start talking.

If you’re looking for a specific term which you can’t find in these resources, get in touch and I’ll do my best to help!

p.s. Did you enjoy the photo at the top? That’s me doing my thing on an ice fall in the Italian Alps.