A bilingual authoring apparatus includes a user interface (20) for inputting partially translated text including a text portion in a source language and surrounding or adjacent text in a target language. A bilingual dictionary (34) associates words and phrases in the target language and words and phrases in a source language. A context sensitive translation tool (30, 32, 38) communicates with the user interface, receives the partially translated text, and provides at least one proposed translation in the target language of the text portion in the source language. The at least one proposed translation in the target language is derived from the bilingual dictionary based on contextual analysis of at least a portion of the partially translated text.