Virtues and vices of French-Italian bilingual dictionaries

RESOURCES FOR TRANSLATORS FROM THE FRENCH LANGUAGE

by Annick Farina

The importance of bilingual dictionaries for the task of translating is often understated. This article illustrates how, on the contrary, a bilingual dictionary can be an essential tool, whose function cannot be replaced by other dictionaries or other types of online resources, at least for those who translate from French into Italian. An overview of several dictionaries for this language pair highlights the merits and flaws of each one of them, with the aim of guiding translators towards the dictionary or dictionaries that best suit the type of translation required.