Bilingual online dictionaries and translation tools as a source of terminology: Insights for translation pedagogy

This study aimed to assess the reliability of online bilingual dictionaries for translating specialist terminology. The vocabulary for the test was extracted from an official glossary of EU terminology and provided to a group of 36 English Philology students attending a basic-level translation course. The students were asked to identify words for which they would need to use a dictionary. Additionally, they were interviewed to determine their typical look-up strategies when confronted with unfamiliar words, collectively referred to as their standard dictionary behavior. Then, these strategies were emulated during the test of the reference tools the students typically used. The research concludes that online reference tools are not reliable sources for specialist terms. The results also indicate which reference skills should be introduced into the training program by translation teachers, particularly those working with novice translators. Keywords: Bilingual online dictionaries, comparative analysis, reliability assessment, search strategies, translation teaching