How to Use Bilingual Dictionaries

By Laura K. Lawless, About.com Guide

Some homonyms can even be two different parts of speech. The English word "produce," for example, can be a verb (They produce a lot of cars) or a noun (They have the best produce). When you look up the word "produce," you'll see at least two French translations: the French verb is produire and the noun is produits. If you don't pay attention to the part of speech of the word you want to translate, you may end up with a big grammatical mistake in whatever you're writing.

Also, pay attention to French gender. Many words have different meanings depending on whether they are masculine or feminine (I call them dual-gender nouns), so when you're looking up a French word, be sure that you're looking at the entry for that gender. And when looking up an English noun, pay special attention to the gender it gives for the French translation.

This is another reason that automatic translators like software and websites aren't very good - they can't distinguish between homonyms that are different parts of speech.