To the lay person, translators and dictionaries go hand in hand. After all, isn’t the dictionary essential to the translator’s work? Multilingual dictionaries are the first thing that comes to mind. And yet such dictionaries are not the translator’s only tool. The translator’s arsenal is also made up of the great unilingual dictionaries, along with encyclopedic and specialized works. How involved have translators been in building up this arsenal? What role have they played throughout the ages? What role do they continue to play? Which came first, the translator or the lexicographer? How many people are aware, for example, that certain eminent authors of dictionaries – Émile Littré and Samuel Johnson, to name but two – were also translators? This paper seeks to address these questions and outline the vast contributions of translators to the creation of the dictionaries of the world.