Parallel text

A parallel text is a text placed alongside its translation or translations. Parallel text alignment is the identification of the corresponding sentences in both halves of the parallel text. The <a href="/facts/Loeb_Classical_Library/AIRXBouP">Loeb Classical Library</a> and the <a href="/facts/Clay_Sanskrit_Library/wammWu01">Clay Sanskrit Library</a> are two examples of dual-language series of texts. Reference <a href="/facts/Bible_translations/r7xaCAlT">Bibles</a> may contain the original languages and a translation, or several translations by themselves, for ease of comparison and study; <a href="/facts/Origen/4o9sw2RQ">Origen</a>'s <a href="/facts/Hexapla/CDloadHG">Hexapla</a> (Greek for "sixfold") placed six versions of the Old Testament side by side. A famous example is the <a href="/facts/Rosetta_Stone/8JLFP1NN">Rosetta Stone</a>, whose discovery allowed the <a href="/facts/Egyptian_language/mSqys6jC">Ancient Egyptian language</a> to begin being <a href="/facts/Decipherment_of_ancient_Egyptian_scripts/5XwoRQS8">deciphered</a>.
Large collections of parallel texts are called parallel corpora (see <a href="/facts/Text_corpus/bYeEQQdh">text corpus</a>). Alignments of parallel corpora at sentence level are prerequisite for many areas of <a href="/facts/Linguistics/oQuamvf2">linguistic</a> research. 
During translation, sentences can be split, merged, deleted, inserted or reordered by the translator. This makes alignment a non-trivial task.
Parallel texts may be used in <a href="/facts/Language_education/MQb6Iu8q">language education</a>.

Parallel text open-in-new

Parallel text