1)

Many of you will have used linguee.com or some other such sites.

If you regularly need specific language combinations, and have them available by shortcuts, try addresses in this form:

http://www.linguee.com/english-german/search?source=auto&query=a

(Please tell us if this can be shortened while preserving a given language combination.)

2)

Have a look at the "footer" of the above site:

"Most frequent German dictionary requests: 1-200, -1k, -2k, -3k, -4k, -5k, -7k, -10k , -20k, -40k, -100k, -200k, -500k, -1000k
Most frequent English dictionary requests: 1-200, -1k, -2k, -3k, -4k, -5k, -7k, -10k , -20k, -40k, -100k, -200k, -500k, -1000k"

The links there will show you frequency lists that I deem of the utmost interest (even though you then will have to look up the translations in question) since from my looking into them, whenever you're not really firm in any language, you'll get tremendously lists (number of items depending on your needs) of current, relevant terms to put in your active vocabulary.

( I left out any superfluous commentary / note here. ;-) )

(that would have been "tremendously useful", omg)

my fault, the syntax is totally simple:

http://www.linguee.com/english-german

and so on