German parallel text from any page you read
Photograph a page of a German book, share an article or paste a few paragraphs. SnapPara shows the German with its English translation, sentence by sentence, so long German sentences stop being a wall.
German above, English below
What it looks like
The opening of Kafka's Die Verwandlung, photographed from a printed page, with the English SnapPara gave:
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheueren Ungeziefer verwandelt.
When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.
Er lag auf seinem panzerartig harten Rücken und sah, wenn er den Kopf ein wenig hob, seinen gewölbten, braunen, von bogenförmigen Versteifungen geteilten Bauch, auf dessen Höhe sich die Bettdecke, zum gänzlichen Niedergleiten bereit, kaum noch erhalten konnte.
He lay on his armor-hard back and, when he raised his head a little, saw his domed, brown belly, divided by arch-shaped ridges, on top of which the bedcover, poised to slide off completely, could barely stay in place.
»Was ist mit mir geschehen?« dachte er.
“What has happened to me?” he thought.
Tap a sentence and it lights up in both languages. Tap a word to hear it and save it with the sentence and its translation; it comes back on your flashcards. The translation can be into your own language instead of English.
What to read
Any German you already have works: a paperback, a news site, a screenshot of an app. If you're looking for something, these are free and public domain:
- Die Verwandlung, Franz Kafka (Wikisource) — a short novel, easy to share from a phone.
- Die Verwandlung, Franz Kafka (Project Gutenberg) — the same book as one file.
Open a chapter in your phone's browser and share it to SnapVerbo, or photograph a printed page.
Reading German in SnapVerbo
- Separable verbs: tap the verb and the lookup finds its prefix at the end of the sentence. The word you tapped stays as it is, but the meaning you get for stellte … vor is that of vorstellen.
- Save a phrase, not just a word: the arrows on the word card add the word before or after, so Beispiel becomes zum Beispiel.
- What each prefix adds, separable or not: German prefixes and their meanings.
- Long compounds can be broken into their parts with Word Parts.
Questions
- Can I read Kafka in German with English side by side?
- Yes. Open Die Verwandlung on Wikisource and share it to SnapVerbo, or photograph a page of your own copy. SnapPara shows each German sentence with its English translation.
- Does it handle separable verbs?
- Yes. When you tap a verb whose prefix has moved to the end of the sentence, the lookup puts the two together and gives you the meaning of the whole verb.
- Is the translation only into English?
- No. SnapPara translates German into many languages; set the one you want. This page uses English as the example.
- Is it free?
- Yes, free forever, with no account needed. Short ads help cover the cost of AI translation.