Finding Parallel Texts on the Internet using Altavista

Extended help:

The Altavista parallel text search interfaces work for general and technical terms alike.
Simply select a search technique and hit Find (Altavista is automatically opened and the search string inserted in the search box).
Replace "keyword"at the beginning of the search string in Altavista's search box with your own search term (word or phrase) in lower case. No need for quotation marks (" "): here, sequences of words are automatically understood as phrases.
Your keyword is a word or phrase that you wish to translate.
Leave "Language:" set to "any language".

Of all the techniques listed for each language pair, the first is generally the most restrictive and effective. Try it out first!

Technique "SL in URL & link to TL"

Finds a page containing your keyword and having a URL indicating your SOURCE language as the page language as well as a link to a page in your TARGET language (possibly a translation) (=> parallel texts on separate web pages).

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) When sifting through the results, look for pages whose address indicates your SOURCE LANGUAGE;

2) Ignore pages whose address contains no indication of your SL, i.e. where words such as "en", "de", "it", "fr", "french" etc. do not indicate the page language but are either:

A) a domain name denoting the country in which the website is registered, as in:

www.site.fr/page.htm (fr=France, not "French")

B) a word with a different meaning, as in:

www.site.ch/la_vie_en_rose.htm (en=French preposition)
www.site.ch/e-commerce.htm (e=electronic)
www.site.ch/french_restaurants_in_london.htm
www.site.ch/buy_it_now.htm

3) Once you have opened a page from the results list, look for a link to a page in your TARGET LANGUAGE (in the form of a flag or a text link).

Technique "Link to TL"

Finds a page containing your keyword and a link to a page in your TARGET language. In the URL of the page found, there is not necessarily an indication of the language of the page (which is therefore presumably the main language): Sometimes the language is only indicated for the foreign languages (=> parallel texts on separate web pages).

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) Once you have opened a page from the results list, look for a link to a page in your TARGET LANGUAGE (in the form of a flag or a text link).

Technique "SL in URL & page in TL country"

Finds a page in your TARGET language country containing your keyword and having a URL indicating your SOURCE language as the page language. The page is very likely to be available in your TARGET language, too (=> parallel texts on separate web pages).

This technique yields fewer but more relevant results compared with techniques 4 & 5.

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) When sifting through the results, look for pages whose address indicates your SOURCE LANGUAGE;

2) Ignore pages whose address contains no indication of your SL, i.e. where words such as "en", "de", "it", "fr", "french" etc. do not indicate the page language but are either:

A) a domain name denoting the country in which the website is registered, as in:

www.site.fr/page.htm (fr=France, not "French")

B) a word with a different meaning, as in:

www.site.ch/la_vie_en_rose.htm (en=French preposition)
www.site.ch/e-commerce.htm (e=electronic)
www.site.ch/french_restaurants_in_london.htm
www.site.ch/buy_it_now.htm

3) Once you have opened a page from the results list, look for a link to a page in your TARGET language (in the form of a flag or a text link). If there is none, then...

4) Try changing the language code in the URL (try various codes and various languages, e.g. for German; de, ge, deu, ger, germ, tede, deutsch, german, tedesco etc.).
The language code may need to be changed in more than one location (directory name, filename prefix/suffix), e.g. http://www.ept.de/deutsch/pc104/pc104_d.htm

5) Alternatively, you may need to go back to the website's homepage (cut the URL down as follows: "www.site.com/xy/z/page.htm" => "www.site.com") and seek a language link there. Once you have figured out the website's structure for denoting various languages (e.g. a directory named "/fr/", "/french/" or "/francais/" or a filename prefix/suffix such as in "page_f.htm" or "fr_page.htm"), you can change the address accordingly (try various codes and various languages).

6) Sometimes the actual file name might change, too (e.g. "produits.htm" in French and "products.htm" in English): in that case all you can do is browse the site's TL pages based on the location of the SL file.

Technique "SL in URL"

Finds a page containing your keyword and having a URL indicating your SOURCE language as the page language, implying that the same page is available in other languages, possibly the one you are looking for (=> parallel texts on separate web pages).

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) When sifting through the results, look for pages whose address indicates your SOURCE LANGUAGE;

2) Ignore pages whose address contains no indication of your SL, i.e. where words such as "en", "de", "it", "fr", "french" etc. do not indicate the page language but are either:

A) a domain name denoting the country in which the website is registered, as in:

www.site.fr/page.htm (fr=France, not "French")

B) a word with a different meaning, as in:

www.site.ch/la_vie_en_rose.htm (en=French preposition)
www.site.ch/e-commerce.htm (e=electronic)
www.site.ch/french_restaurants_in_london.htm
www.site.ch/buy_it_now.htm

3) Once you have opened a page from the results list, look for a link to a page in your TARGET language (in the form of a flag or a text link). If there is none, then...

4) Try changing the language code in the URL (try various codes and various languages, e.g. for German; de, ge, deu, ger, germ, tede, deutsch, german, tedesco etc.);
The language code may need to be changed in more than one location (directory name, filename prefix/suffix), e.g. http://www.ept.de/deutsch/pc104/pc104_d.htm

5) Alternatively, you may need to go back to the website's homepage (cut the URL down as follows: "www.site.com/xy/z/page.htm" => "www.site.com") and seek a language link there. Once you have figured out the website's structure for denoting various languages (e.g. a directory named "/fr/", "/french/" or "/francais/" or a filename prefix/suffix such as in "page_f.htm" or "fr_page.htm"), you can change the address accordingly (try various codes and various languages).

6) Sometimes the actual file name might change, too (e.g. "produits.htm" in French and "products.htm" in English): in that case all you can do is browse the site's TL pages based on the location of the SL file.

Technique "Page in TL country"

Finds a page containing your keyword in a country speaking your TARGET language: this assumes that there is a parallel text in that language ( => parallel texts on same/separate web page(s)).

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) Once you have opened a page from the results list, look for parallel texts on the same page. If there are none, ...

2) Look for a link to a page in your TARGET LANGUAGE (in the form of a flag or a text link). If there is none, ...

3) Go back to the website's homepage (cut the URL down as follows: "www.site.com/xy/z/page.htm" => "www.site.com") and seek a language link there. Once you have figured out the website's structure for denoting various languages (e.g. a directory named "/fr/", "/french/" or "/francais/" or a filename prefix/suffix such as in "page_f.htm" or "fr_page.htm"), you can change the address accordingly. Try various codes and various languages, e.g. for German; de, ge, deu, ger, germ, tede, deutsch, german, tedesco etc.).
The language code may need to be changed in more than one location (directory name, filename prefix/suffix), e.g. http://www.ept.de/deutsch/pc104/pc104_d.htm

Technique "Page in TL"

Finds a page in your TARGET language containing your keyword: you may find a translation of your term nearby (=> parallel texts on same page).

WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR:

1) Once you have opened a page from the results list, search for your term and look for a translation nearby. This might be in the form of parallel texts on the same page or a TL equivalent term in brackets.

To increase your results:

A) Check your spelling!
B) Consider alternative spelling, e.g. ä/ae, bluechip/blue chip/blue-chip;
C) Use * for 0-... characters, placing it after min. 3 characters, e.g. fibr* ottic* for fibra ottica or fibre ottiche;
D) Break your phrase down, e.g. instead of internet backbone, search for (internet NEAR backbone), including the brackets! You could also try internet AND backbone, without brackets.
To limit your results/fine-tune your search:

A) To create a context, use NEAR and another keyword that you would expect to find nearby, for example: .... AND (security NEAR deposit).
This is useful when your keyword (security) has many meanings. You could also try AND instead of NEAR;
B) Write anchor: before your keyword (e.g. anchor:fibr* ottic*);
C) Set "Language:" in Altavista to the language you are interested in;
D) If you are obtaining TOO many pages from the same site, select "One result per Web site" in Altavista.
If it is unclear what language your keyword is in, you may want to specify the language by selecting one in Altavista.
Look through the URLs of your results: You may want to IGNORE those pages that do NOT contain a designation of the SOURCE language (e.g. Italian in the case of Italian->English) but contain e.g. "it" ONLY as the domain name (here: Italy) (and not as a means of specifying the language of the page): Such pages are likely to be irrelevant!

E.g. Here, "it" refers only to the domain name (ignore such pages!):
             www.whatever.it

        Here, "it" indicates the language of the page:
             www.whatever.com/it/12345.htm
             www.whatever.com/12345_it.htm
Once you have opened an interesting page, open a second browser window and look for the language link on the page or change the language designation in the URL to locate the page in the other language. Try different variants (e.g. for English: en, eng, engl, english, inglese, uk, us, etc.).
NOTE: Sometimes changes have to be made in more than one place, e.g. http://www.ept.de/deutsch/pc104/pc104_d.htm will become: http://www.ept.de/english/pc104/pc104_e.htm.
Alternative search techniques include the following (starting out with an empty search box - remove any previous search criteria):

- Set the language in Altavista to your TARGET LANGUAGE and search for your keyword (SOURCE LANGUAGE).
(May find your source term next to the equivalent term in the other language, or even entire parallel texts on the same web page. Alternatively, it may help confirm whether or not your source term is also used in the target language).

- Search for your keyword (SOURCE language) and a word or phrase that you are absolutely certain of in the TARGET language (E.g. imposta preventiva NEAR tax ; imposta preventiva AND tax) [leave language set to any language or change to SOURCE or TARGET language]
(Finds parallel texts on the same web page).

- Search for your keyword (SOURCE language) and a word designating your TARGET language. Example: imposta preventiva AND (english or inglese or englisch or anglais) [leave language set to any language]
(May find a bilingual glossary or a page linking to a parallel text).
If you cannot find a language link or a parallel text of any sort on a page that you have found using the parallel text search techniques above, try deleting the URL one section at the time (back to next "/") from the right-hand side until you find a page with a lead.
Always assess the authority of the texts found (Original text? Translation?) before using any terminology.