Machine for turning French and English articles (5)
I believe the answer is:
lathe
'machine for turning' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'french and english articles' is the wordplay.
'french and english' becomes 'l' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'articles' becomes 'a the' ('a' and 'the', indefinite and definite articles).
'l'+'athe'='LATHE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for lathe that I've seen before include "Machine tool for shaping metal or wood" , "This is turned out" , "Turner's tool" , "8 [TURNER]" , "Turning instrument" .)