Good translation site?

I am new to this site so appreciate if this has been discussed several times before but can anyone recommend a good translation site ,preferably with spoken words .I have just come across the word Copians which is used for friends ,I have always used Amis ,is Copians used for young friends ?I have tried a couple of translation sites and they come back in English with copians {very frustrating]

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Permalink Reply by Gheala Inflacari on October 24, 2010 at 1:30pm

I use Google translator. It's much more accurate now and you can listen to the words as well. Of course, wiktionary provides very good audio pronunciation.

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Permalink Reply by carol bland on October 24, 2010 at 2:28pm

Thank you Gheala, I will try both

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on October 24, 2010 at 7:31pm

Automatic translators like Google Translate are really designed for getting a very rough idea of what a paragraph of text is talking about. They're not designed to give information on the nuances of individual words.

As a clue to finding out about how words are used, it's worth looking at all the clues in dictionary entries, not just the suggested translations (though these are also a clue). Taking this site's French dictionary as an example (though of course, getting multiple opinions from different dictionaries is also recommended), if you look up copain, you'll see that the suggested translations include "mate", and that the word is marked as "Infml" (Informal); on the other hand, ami is a more neutral word.

Of course, as your proficiency with the language grows, another invaluable source is to look at monolingual dictionaries-- or in effect, see the commentaries of French speakers about how they perceive the use of words.