Bilingual books, side by side

Finish your first
novella in German

Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts · about 144 min

Paralelo puts public-domain classics in their original language beside a translation, matched phrase by phrase, with an explanation the moment you get stuck.

No card. No streak to keep. Close the tab and your page is still here tomorrow.

Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts
ParaleloRead it now, no account

Da tanzt =sie= nun, dacht ich in dem Baume droben bei mir selber, und hat gewiß lange dich und deine Blumen wieder vergessen.

There =she= dances now, I thought up in the tree to myself, and has certainly long forgotten you and your flowers again.

Alles ist so fröhlich, um dich kümmert sich kein Mensch. -- Und so geht es mir überall und immer.

Everything is so merry, nobody cares about you. — And so it goes with me everywhere and always.

Jeder hat sein Plätzchen auf der Erde ausgesteckt, hat seinen warmen Ofen, seine Tasse Kaffee, seine Frau, sein Glas Wein zu Abend und ist so recht zufrieden;

Everyone has staked out his little place on earth, has his warm stove, his cup of coffee, his wife, his glass of wine in the evening, and is quite content;

selbst dem Portier ist ganz wohl in seiner langen Haut. -- Mir ists nirgends recht.

even the porter is entirely at ease in his long skin. — For me it is nowhere right.

Es ist, als wäre ich überall eben zu spät gekommen, als hätte die ganze Welt gar nicht auf mich gerechnet. --

It is as if I had everywhere arrived just too late, as if the whole world had not counted on me at all. —

Wie ich eben so philosophiere, höre ich auf einmal unten im Grase etwas einherrascheln.

Just as I am philosophizing thus, I suddenly hear something rustling down in the grass.

Zwei feine Stimmen sprachen ganz nahe und leise miteinander.

Two fine voices spoke quite near and softly with one another.

Bald darauf bogen sich die Zweige in dem Gesträuche auseinander, und die Kammerjungfer steckte ihr kleines Gesichtchen, sich nach allen Seiten umsehend, zwischen der Laube hindurch.

Soon after, the branches in the shrubbery parted, and the chambermaid stuck her little face, looking around on all sides, through the arbor.

Der Mondschein funkelte recht auf ihren pfiffigen Augen, wie sie hervorguckten.

The moonlight sparkled right on her cunning eyes as they peered out.

Ich hielt den Atem an mich und blickte unverwandt hinunter.

I held my breath and gazed fixedly down.

Es dauerte auch nicht lange, so trat wirklich die Gärtnerin, ganz so wie mir sie die Kammerjungfer gestern beschrieben hatte, zwischen den Bäumen heraus.

It did not last long either, so truly the gardener’s girl, quite as the chambermaid had described her to me yesterday, stepped out from between the trees.

Mein Herz klopfte mir zum Zerspringen.

My heart beat fit to burst.

Sie aber hatte eine Larve vor und sah sich, wie mir schien, verwundert auf dem Platze um. -- Da wollts mir vorkommen,

But she had a mask on and looked around the place, as it seemed to me, in wonder. — Then it wanted to seem to me

als wäre sie gar nicht recht schlank und niedlich. -- Endlich trat sie ganz nahe an den Baum und nahm die Larve ab. -- Es war wahrhaftig die andere ältere gnädige Frau!

that she was not quite slender and dainty after all. — At last she stepped quite close to the tree and took off the mask. — It was truly the other, older gracious lady!

Open Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts →

A passage from Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts. Click a sentence to see how it lines up.

Featured

Read what you'd actually read

Whole books from Project Gutenberg, public domain and free to read with an account, each one translated and aligned end to end.

Browse Library

Browse All

What you get

Read a book you couldn't read yesterday, without stopping.

Three things do the work: the translation is already beside you, every phrase is matched to its counterpart, and anything that still resists gets explained in context.

01Side-by-side translation

Never break your reading to look something up

The original and a careful translation sit side by side, matched phrase by phrase. When a line resists you, the answer is already at eye level: you glance, you understand, you keep going. That unbroken flow is what turns studying a language into reading in it.

  • Sentence-level sync, so you never hunt for your place
  • Read the original for rhythm, the translation only when you stumble
Deutsch

»Was ist mit mir geschehen?« dachte er.

Es war kein Traum.

English

‘What has happened to me?’ he thought.

It was no dream.

02Phrase mapping

See exactly which words became which

Every phrase in the original is matched to its counterpart in the translation and tinted the same colour on both sides. You stop guessing which half of the sentence corresponds to the word you don't know. You can see it.

  • Matched phrase groups, not word-for-word glosses that mislead
  • Word order differences become obvious instead of confusing
La bonne MartheGood Martha
dut se croiremust have thought herself
fort en retardvery late
03In-depth explanation

An explanation for every sentence

Click any sentence and get an explanation written for that exact line: what it literally says, what it actually means, the grammar behind the construction, and the cultural detail a native reader would catch and you would miss.

  • Context-aware grammar explanations
  • Vocabulary breakdowns with examples

“Su luna de miel fué un largo escalofrío.”

Note · alignment

Literal: “Her moon of honey was a long shiver.” Luna de miel is one unit: honeymoon.

Grammar: “Fué” is the preterite of ser, spelled with the accent it carried until 1952. The preterite closes the honeymoon off as one finished whole.

Context: The first line of Quiroga’s “El almohadón de pluma” (1907): a horror story whose whole marriage is already in the word escalofrío.

Read any book here, free

Every title is public domain, and a free account opens all of them: both columns, matched phrase by phrase, with an explanation whenever a sentence resists you. Paying only lifts the daily cap of 5 explanations.

See the plans

Questions

Still unsure? Open a book first. The passage on this page needs no account.

Do I need an account?

To read a passage, no: every book here opens on an excerpt, aligned, with explanations. To read a whole book, yes, and it is free.

What does it cost?

Reading is free. A free account opens every book in full. Paying lifts the daily cap on explanations.

Which languages can I learn here?

Books written in German, Spanish, French, Italian, each with the translation beside it. The list grows as translations are published.

Is this machine translation?

Yes, and we say so. Every translation is produced by a model and checked before it is published: paragraph parity, length, language, and alignment coverage.

Where do the books come from?

Project Gutenberg, which publishes works whose copyright has expired. Nothing we publish is in copyright.

Start reading in a new language today

Pick a book, choose your language, and read. No flashcards. No drills. Just the next sentence, then the next.

Create Free Account

Free forever. Upgrade anytime.