Looking for Spanish Stories with English Translations? Check These Sites Out!
If you’re a bibliophile who’s learning Spanish, chances are you’ve already discovered the beauty of using Spanish literature for language practice.
Reading in Spanish can help you improve your grammar and sentence structure and it can introduce you to a wide variety of vocabulary words.
In other words, reading Spanish-language texts is a great way to fast-track your Spanish fluency.
But sometimes, picking up any old book in Spanish can present a series of problems, particularly for beginners: What do you do when you can’t figure out what’s going on in the story? How can you check your comprehension without the help of a teacher or language partner?
The resources in this article solve these problems. Here, you’ll find six free websites with Spanish stories and books—that have built-in English translations. Each website has unique features and content that correspond to particular tastes and ability levels.
Read on to find which one’s right for you!
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
How Spanish Stories with English Translations Can Help You Read at Any Level
Some of the websites included here are better suited for particular Spanish ability levels. (For example, fairy tales and children’s stories are better for beginner learners, whereas classic novels will satisfy the needs of more advanced Spanish speakers.)
But there are also ways to alter your reading experience, regardless of which story you choose. Here are some ideas for each ability level:
- Beginner level: Absolute beginners might choose to read an entire story’s English translation before looking at the Spanish text at all, or reading one English paragraph at a time before reading its corresponding Spanish paragraph. This will help you work on your overall comprehension without getting bogged down by a ton of unfamiliar vocabulary.
When reading the Spanish version, try to seek out Spanish-English cognates and other familiar words, which will help you connect the Spanish version to the English one.
Alternatively, beginning learners might choose to open both the English and Spanish texts side-by-side, looking back and forth as much as they need to.
- Intermediate level: If you feel like you’ve moved past the beginner level, try to read one full paragraph in Spanish without glancing at the English text. If at the end of the paragraph you feel confident that you’ve understood the meaning, keep reading in Spanish. When you get completely lost, use the English translation to help you out.
This method will encourage you to use context clues and dig deep in your vocabulary memory to figure out the meaning.
- Advanced level: If you’re an advanced Spanish-speaker, challenge yourself to read an entire short story (or chapter of a book) without looking at the English text.
Before looking at the translation, write a few sentences about what happened in the text. (This can be in Spanish, too, for extra writing practice!) Then, skim the English version to make sure you’ve understood the text correctly.
It helps to also have good supportive learning tools while you’re reading, like FluentU.
FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.
You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Click here to check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.
6 Places to Find Dozens of Spanish Stories with English Translations… for Free!
The Spanish Experiment
Level: Beginner
Have you ever heard of “Pollito Tito” or “Ricitos de Oro”? If not, then I can guarantee you’ve heard of their English counterparts: “Chicken Little” and “Goldilocks.”
On The Spanish Experiment, you can read Spanish-English versions of five children’s stories that you’ll definitely remember from your own childhood. Plus, through the website’s partnership with The Fable Cottage, they’ve recently added four additional stories, including classics like “Jack and the Beanstalk” and “Hansel and Gretel.”
What The Spanish Experiment lacks in breadth, it makes up in quality. Each of the stories is beautifully written and comes with a multitude of features so you can play around with your reading experience.
Each story is presented in Spanish. At the end of each short paragraph, you’ll see a “Translate” button. The translation of each paragraph remains hidden until you want to see it, which can be great for learners trying to flex their memorization and vocab muscles. Or, you can choose to “show all translations” at the beginning of the text, and read the English and Spanish versions side-by-side.
Some of the stories, such as “Jack and the Beanstalk,” provide two options: “Translate” and “Literal.” The “Translate” button will give you a literary English translation that captures the meaning of the whole paragraph. But the “Literal” button will provide word-by-word translations in case you’re struggling with a particular phrase.
The Spanish Experiment also offers high-quality audio to accompany each story and includes videos on a few of them. If you’re watching an accompanying video, use the closed captioning button in the bottom right corner to toggle between English, Spanish and no subtitles. Or, click on the subtitles to pull up a full interactive transcript of the story.
Due to the fact that most English speakers will be familiar with these fairy tales and fables, this website is especially well-suited to beginner learners.
Snappy Spanish
Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Snappy Spanish is great for on-the-go learners who only have a few minutes each day to devote to language-learning. Each of their stories is meant to be read in five minutes or less.
Unlike The Spanish Experiment, Snappy Spanish doesn’t focus on Spanish-English retellings of popular fairy tales. Instead, these stories are more like what you might find in a Spanish textbook: short, original stories about a variety of topics.
While that means that these stories are less immediately accessible than more well-known stories, it also has some advantages. Original stories test a reader’s ability to follow an unfamiliar plot, relying only on their language skills. Plus, these stories touch upon a wider variety of vocabulary and include more verb tenses than you could expect to find in a typical fairy tale.
Snappy Spanish is broken down by level, and while they do have texts in the categories of “Upper Intermediate” and “Advanced,” the majority of their stories are labeled “Beginner,” “Elementary” and “Intermediate.” The stories are presented side-by-side, with the Spanish version on the left and a paragraph-by-paragraph English translation on the right. This makes it easy for readers to check themselves as they read.
According to their website, Snappy Spanish plans to release an app soon, which will include even more content and will allow readers to take their stories with them to-go. Stay tuned!
Learn Spanish with Bilingual Stories
Level: Intermediate-Advanced
Some people say that if you want to do something right, you have to do it yourself. This charmingly home-grown website is a labor of love by one enthusiastic linguist and translator.
The owner of the website has painstakingly matched Spanish and English translations of literary classics. You can find great works like “Dracula,” “Frankenstein” and “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” In some cases, such as this Edgar Allen Poe short story, the website’s creator has even tracked down two alternative translations, so that readers can compare word choice and sentence structure.
This kind, anonymous soul has also taken the time to color-code each translation to make it easier to follow. Certain sentences, which are metaphorical, literary or otherwise tricky have been highlighted in color and matched with the same sentence in the translation. This is a godsend for readers who struggle with non-literal Spanish phrases.
Of course, the self-styled nature of the website has its drawbacks. Some works are incomplete. (For example, “Dracula” has only been translated through Part One.) Some texts have side-by-side translations, whereas others go sentence-by-sentence. And the website’s display can be a bit hard to read, though the website creator suggests that this can be made easier with a browser extension called Readlang.
That said, this is a great resource for learners looking to move beyond children’s stories and tackle longer, more difficult texts.
Grimms’ Fairy Tales
Level: Beginner-Intermediate
Ready for more children’s stories? This website offers a complete collection of the fables written by the Brothers Grimm. This means you can find famous fables you’ve definitely heard of (like “Rumpelstiltskin”) as well as some deep cuts (anyone ever heard of “King Thrushbeard”? I haven’t).
The website has English and Spanish versions (not to mention tons of other language options) for each fable. Since this isn’t technically a Spanish-learning website and these aren’t designed as parallel texts, the experience with Grimms’ Fairy Tales is a bit more DIY than the other offerings on this list.
To start, go to the complete list of Grimm fairy tales in English and in Spanish. You’ll notice that each fairy tale has a number from one to 200. The tales are in the same order on both lists, so simply pick a number and you’ll be able to easily find the Spanish and English versions. If you’re having trouble picking, you can always use the “Story at random”/“Cuento al azar” option to get a random story in Spanish or English, and then navigate to the translation yourself.
Reading the Spanish and English versions side-by-side, you’ll notice that they’re not literal word-by-word translations. However, each paragraph in the English version corresponds quite accurately to a paragraph in the Spanish version. These non-literal translations can help you, as a learner, break away from the instinct to translate word-by-word.
paralleltext.io
Level: Intermediate-Advanced
This resource provides a selection of over a dozen classic novels, translated into English and Spanish as well as many other languages. Don’t expect to find any fairy tales or Grimm fables here—this website is all about literature, featuring works by famous authors from around the world like Leo Tolstoy, Franz Kafka and Jane Austen.
When you arrive at the home page, indicate that you’re an English speaker who’d like to work on Spanish. Then, after you’ve picked a text, you can choose one of two ways to read by clicking the lines in the upper left corner: “Compact View” allows you to read the Spanish text, mousing over and clicking on the arrows to switch to the English translation paragraph-by-paragraph; “Split View” allows you to see both texts side-by-side.
This website does have a few quirks and bugs to watch out for. One of the available stories, “A Study in Scarlet,” offers a French/Spanish translation instead of English/Spanish. And every so often you’ll find a French phrase thrown into other stories!
Occasionally, when reading in compact mode, you’ll find that the translations don’t exactly align with the paragraph breaks in the original.
Finally, the mouse-over audio is all automatically generated, so don’t copy the pronunciation unless you want to sound like a Spanish-speaking robot with a very odd accent.
That said, these are small prices to pay for free access to several classic novels in Spanish and English, so if you can get used to these quirks, paralleltexts.io is well worth using.
bilinguis.com
Level: Intermediate-Advanced
bilinguis.com is very similar to paralleltext.io in that it offers a small but well-curated selection of classic literature, translated into multiple languages. In fact, most of the offerings are duplicated on both websites.
So, why turn to this site? Well, it avoids many of the paralleltext.io issues discussed above: There are fewer mistakes, no accidental French and no annoying computer-generated audio.
bilinguis.com only offers a split view, though, with no equivalent to the compact mode on paralleltext.io. But if you can give up the compact view with mouse-over translations, it may be worth it to choose bilinguis.com. Ultimately, the choice between the two websites depends on your own language-learning style and preferences.
Reading Spanish stories with English translations is a great way to improve your grammar skills and vocabulary recall. Plus, parallel texts make it easy to start reading in Spanish at any level.
So, whether you’d rather read a cute children’s story or revisit your favorite classic novel, it’s a fantastic idea to add reading to your language-learning routine.
Which story will you tackle first?
Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)
