How to Use Bilingual Dictionaries

By Laura K. Lawless, About.com Guide

A lot of words and expressions have at least two meanings: a literal meaning and a figurative one. Bilingual dictionaries will list the literal translation(s) first, followed by any figurative ones. It's easy to translate literal language, but figurative terms are much more delicate. For example, the English word "blue" literally refers to a color - its French equivalent is bleu. But "blue" can also be used figuratively to indicate sadness, as in "to feel blue," which is equivalent to avoir le cafard. If you were to translate "to feel blue" literally, you'd end up with the nonsensical "se sentir bleu."

The same rules apply when translating from French to English. The French expression avoir le cafard is also figurative, since literally it means "to have the cockroach." If someone were to say this to you, you'd have no idea what they meant (although you'd probably suspect that they didn't heed my advice on how to use a bilingual dictionary). Avoir le cafard is an idiom - an expression that you can't translate literally - it is the French equivalent of "to feel blue."

This is yet another reason that automatic translators like software and websites aren't very good - they can't distinguish between figurative and literal language, and they tend to translate word for word.