Fluent in 3 Months: How Anyone at Any Age Can Learn to Speak Any Language from Anywhere in the World

particular place names, technical accessories, and many common items in
the language of interest and then see the list of translations available in the
left-hand bar of the main article’s page. The translated article title is enough
to give you a good translation. This is especially useful when a single word
can mean multiple things.
Google Translate or Bing Translator: You should never rely on
automatic translations for most of your work, but they are good for getting
the gist. I generally have Google Translate open while I’m having a live
Skype session or use it to help me understand long texts I may find online.
Book-based dictionaries: When I start to learn a language, I find that
the dictionary at the end of my phrase book (Lonely Planet, Berlitz,
Assimil, Collins, etc.) tends to include the most essential vocabulary and be
small enough to take with me in my pocket (although apps on my
smartphone are obviously more versatile). Book dictionaries are harder to
keep updated and may miss lots of important words unless they are very
large and bulky, so I would recommend using digital alternatives beyond
pocket dictionaries.
Monolingual dictionaries: The previous options are mostly for
bilingual dictionaries. That is to say, you look up the word to find its
translation, whether that is to or from your native language. When reading
or hearing words, though, once you pass a certain level (usually for me, it’s
from B1 and up), you should opt to use monolingual dictionaries: Spanish–
Spanish or French–French, etc. This will greatly facilitate the process
through which you attempt to think through that language and not through
translations the entire time.
Image searching: When you use your favorite search engine, you can
set it to search for images rather than web pages. For beginners, this can be
a great way to understand the meaning of a word without going through
your native language, and you get used to not thinking via translations. In
this case, use the search engine in that language. For instance, go to
Google.fr for the French version of Google, Google.es for the Spanish one,
etc., and click to image-search in that language.

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