Best Free Translation Tools Online?

Living in Quebec, Canada, i spend a whole lot of time writing documents in both English and French. With a French mother and a French education, but having grown up in England, i consider myself 100% bilingual.

But even the best of us, occasionally, have moments when we can’t think of the equivalent word in the other language. So, in my browser, at all times, i have at least 2-3 sites bookmarked for finding the fastest answer.

Until now, my main resource was the “Grand Dictionnaire Terminologique” that lets you enter keywords in either languages. But actually, I find that for the “common” words, it always comes up with so many different uses, that it’s overwhelming.

In the past, i’ve used all the other common ones, Reverso, Babelfish… For those, i found that the interface was not user-friendly, especially for someone like me who uses my keyword for shortcuts and hardly uses my mouse.

In the past few weeks, i’ve been using Google Translate (the one that’s part of Google Dictionary, not the actual Google Translate, just follow this link and select your language choice from the dropdown), and my experience has been nothing compared to what it had been when i had tried it a few years back. It’s perfect now, simply interface, 100% accuracy (for me, so far), with just enough different options, but not too many.

Anyone else out there who translated a lot, all day? What are your favorite free tools? Do you pay for translation tools, and if so, is it worth it? Would love to hear from you.