1. An electronic dictionary comprising; a memory that contains a data structure composed of a plurality of records, each record comprising representations of the following: a first term, a second term, and a topical code, wherein said first term is in a first language, said second term is in a second language and said topical code indicates a topical area in which the second term is a translation of the first term, a record in the data structure having been generated by (a) providing a collection of textual objects in the first or second language, each textual object having been associated with one or more codes that identify a topic to which the textual object pertains, and (b) entering into the record representations of a term from the textual object, a topical code associated with the textual object, and the corresponding term from a translation of the textual object into the other language.