ABSTRACT
By its very nature, a bilingual dictionary is crude and oversimplified. It concentrates on denotation since it is impossible to take account of all connotations or language-specific viewpoints. To give an example: a speaker of English might look up girl in a French dictionary and find fille. This is denotatively accurate, but French people tend to use jeune fille for girl because fille can be used for prostitute. Bilingual dictionaries are perhaps more useful for jogging the memory or adding to something that one already knows than for providing entirely new information.
