What is a parallel text?

A parallel text keeps both versions of a text in view at once. A translation on its own replaces the original; a parallel text keeps the original and puts the translation next to it, so you choose how much of each you read.

That is why parallel texts are loved by very different readers: someone learning a language, someone who grew up with two, a student of literature who wants the poet’s own words, or a translator checking how a sentence was carried across.

Texts set beside their translations are as old as translation itself. The Rosetta Stone carries the same decree in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek, and that side-by-side arrangement is what let scholars decipher hieroglyphs in the nineteenth century.

Printed parallel editions followed. Renaissance polyglot Bibles set Hebrew, Greek and Latin in columns on the same page. In the twentieth century the Loeb Classical Library made the facing-page format familiar to every student of Greek and Latin, and publishers such as Penguin brought out parallel-text anthologies of short stories for language learners.

The catch has always been choice. Printed dual-language editions exist for a small number of classics and language pairs, and the book you actually want to read is rarely among them.

Facing pages

The original on the left page, the translation on the right. The classic printed format; it works best when the two languages run to a similar length.

Side-by-side columns

Two columns on the same page or screen, each paragraph level with its translation. Your eye moves a few centimetres to check a line, not a whole page. This is how DuoText shows a book in the browser on a wide screen.

Alternating paragraphs

A paragraph in one language, then the same paragraph in the other. Narrow screens, phones and e-readers have little room for two columns, so the pairs can follow each other instead.

Interlinear

A translation under every word or phrase. Useful for dissecting grammar, tiring for reading a story, and a different thing from a parallel text in the usual sense.

• Language learners who want to read real books before they can manage them alone. The translation catches you when a sentence is too hard, so you keep reading instead of giving up. See how to learn a language with parallel texts.
• Bilingual readers and families who share a book across two languages, or read to children in the language of one parent while the other follows along.
• Heritage speakers who speak a language fluently but read it slowly, and want the story to move at the speed of their stronger language.
• Readers of classics and poetry who want the original’s sound and word choice, with a translation for the meaning.
• Translators and students comparing how a text was rendered, sentence by sentence.

Pick one side as your main text and stay in it. Look across only when you are stuck, then come straight back. Reading both sides of every paragraph halves your speed and turns a story into homework.

If you are learning, read in the language you are learning and keep your own language as the safety net. If you already read both well, read in whichever language the book was written in and use the other to slow down on the passages that matter.

Printed dual-language editions

Good for a handful of classics in the big European languages. Expect short stories and poetry more often than novels, and few choices outside English, French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Free online libraries

Public-domain stories already paired with a translation. The DuoText library has short classics by O. Henry, Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Oscar Wilde, Saki and Aesop, readable in the browser without an account.

Making your own from any book

The only way to read the book you want as a parallel text. Upload an EPUB or a text-based PDF to DuoText, pick the language to read alongside it, and every paragraph comes back paired with its translation. Read it in the browser, or download it for your Kindle or Kobo. The translation is made for you, as a reading companion rather than a published translation, and there is a free preview before you use any pages.

Pages for the language pairs readers ask about most, with free samples in each:

• English–Spanish parallel texts
• English–French parallel texts
• English–German parallel texts
• English–Italian parallel texts