Afinando el español

To find the perfect definition/translation English-Spanish/Spanish-English:

1) I look it up in wordreference, and see if there are any discussions about it, i.e. "cream of tartar", or squirrel/chipmunk (ardilla listada). And at this link, borgonyon explains "Estoy de acuerdo con fenix, se le puede llamar "ardillita" en el mismo sentido que llamamos "chinos" a todos los asiáticos, más como un nombre genérico." Beautiful! ;)

2) If I want to know whether the word is Chilean or not (I've lost all perspective), I look in up in the DRAE.

3) If it's a new word or something I don't understand well, often I'll look it up in the drae, or click on the "Spanish definition" in word reference. Often, a word that is more commonly used in Spanish will have a crappy English translation, or it will have one translation when there are really like 5. This is where it's good to read the definition in Spanish.

4) Also, if there are different translations for the same word like "rebuscado" can be translated as "far-fetched", "round-about", "overcomplicated", etc., obviously it's good to understand the different meanings related to different contexts, especially when the different words are in the non-native language. Again, I'll often look up the Spanish definition of each of these words.

5) If it's a complicated thing, a concept, a medical condition, or something that might benefit from a look at wikipedia, I go there next. For instance to have another look at the squirrel/chipmunk difference, here are some links to wikipedia (this was actually more complicated than I'd imagined because there are a ton of different squirrel articles in wikipedia.):

Tree squirrel - this is the squirrel I see in Minnesota. Once I look it up in English, I then click on "Español" to see what the wikipedistas have decided is the translation. Interestingly, there is no link to Español for this one.

Squirrel (in general) - This one doesn't have the Español link either, but it does have one in Esperanto and another in Gallego.

Eastern Gray Squirrel - I believe this one inhabits Minnesota as well. Finally, I find an article with a link to the Spanish article on the sciurus carolinesis (ardilla).

Then, the moment of truth as I look up chipmunk in wikipedia. I click on the Spanish link and find tamias minimus, also called the "ardilla rayada".

So Lydia wasn't far off explaining this difference to her students, at least in relation to wikipedia. ;)

Edited Dec. 4
Ah and 6) Often I'll google expressions in both Spanish and English. Especially for my chilensis blog because sometimes the words aren't super common and appear in neither dictionaries nor wikipedia.

This is my translation method, that mostly works, except when there is no translation, like for the word "vogueing" for example. But then, at least we know there is no translation.