This paper discusses some ways in which the concept of `dictionary', facilitated by recent developments in computing and corpus linguistics, may be accommodated in order to better serve translators' needs in the future. Two perspectives are considered, in particular the need for context-sensitive information and the need for subject knowledge. In the first case, it is argued that translators, as creators and interpreters of texts, deal in word forms, not lemmas as found in dictionary entries. In the second case, different kinds of dictionary presentation are considered, according to form (semasiological) and to meaning (onomasiological); the difficulties posed for the translator by groupings according to form are pointed out. The paper concludes with a discussion of the role which technology may play in providing solutions, including the capture of data from text corpora and the representation of subject-based knowledge using knowledge-representation formalisms rather than encryption in databases.