How to use a bi-lingual dictionary

There are more words in any language than there are arrangements of sounds or letters. Put another way, every language (that I know of) at least sometimes uses the same arrangements of sounds or letters for different words. (If you don't understand what is meant by "word" here, read on.)

For example: what

What is used as different words in English. Look at the following sentences:

What are you doing? (Here it is an interrogative pronoun)
What book are you reading? (Here it is an interrogative adjective)
I don't understand what he's saying. (Here it is a relative pronoun)

(If you do not know what pronouns, relative and interrogative, and adjectives are [that was eighth grade English], you need to find out.)

Because languages do not correspond word for word, you cannot assume that the French word for what (interrogative pronoun) will be the same as the French word for what (interrrogative adjective) or what (relative pronoun). And, in fact, it is not. Those sentences translate as:

Que faites-vous? or Qu'est-ce que vous faites?
Quel livre lisez-vous?
Je ne comprends pas ce qu'il dit.

As you see, in each case the English what has a different French translation, because in each case it is a different word, and different languages do not group words under sounds/spellings the same way.

Therefore, in order to use a bi-lingual dictionary, you must first analyse grammatically the word you want to translate before you try to find its French equivalent. If you don't remember how to do this from eighth grade English, you have to go back and learn it. Without it, you will never be able to learn French or any other language.

Say you want to say in French "What does Pierre Loti do to make language unclear?" but you don't know how to say "What" in French.

You can't just open your bi-lingual dictionary to what and pick the first word you see. Take a look at this bi-lingual dictionary entry for what and you'll see why:

There are lots of different translations given for what, and the only way to tell which one is right for your sentence is to analyse your sentence grammatically.

The first French words you see after the English what are qui, que. But you can't translate "What does Pierre Loti do to make language unclear?" as "Que/Qui Pierre Loti fait pour rendre le langage moins clair?" It's not correct French. Why? Because you need an interrogative pronoun--"What does Pierre Loti do to make language unclear?"--and que, qui are non interrogative pronouns.

How can you tell that? Right after what, at the beginning of the definition, there is an a. That means the first words given are adjectives, which is not what you need. Subsequently, you see 1. (Relative) 2. (Interrogative) 3. (Exclamatory), three different kinds of adjectives. None of that is what you are looking for.

You have to go down to II. what, pron., to find pronouns. Again, the first ones, ce qui, ce que, won't work for you, because they are marked (Relative). In your sentence, "What does Pierre Loti do to make language unclear?", what is an interrrogative pronoun, not a relative pronoun. So you keep going until you get to 2. (Interrogative). You still have four choices: qu'est-ce qui, qu'est-ce que, que, quoi, and to determine which of these is what you are looking for you have to know the appropriate grammar rules. In your example, you will pick qu'est-ce que: Qu'est-ce que Pierre Loti fait pour rendre le langage moins clair? But at least you have finally arrived where you need to be.

The lesson here? When using a bi-lingual dictionary, you must first understand the grammar of what you want to say in English before you can choose which of the various words in the entry is the one you need. To do this, you need to know how to analyse a sentence grammatically. If you have forgotten, you need to learn that pronto. Get an eighth-grade English grammar book and go back over the grammar section.