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How can I restrict the results of a Google search to only a specific language? Is there an operator like language:english?

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  • If you are logged in, you can now do this simply by clicking your user icon at the top right corner, then Language. You can change display and/or results language, and region.
    – Kamal
    Commented Aug 2 at 16:12

6 Answers 6

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You can do that using the advanced search options: http://www.googleguide.com/sharpening_queries.html

I also found this, which might work for you: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-see-google-search-results-for-other-locations/25203/

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Just wanted to add a more comprehensive answer about language parameters in Google Search.

There are 4 language-related options.

1. Web interface language: hl=

Example: www.google.com/search?q=vilnius&hl=lt

2. Pages in specified language: lr=lang_

Example: www.google.com/search?q=vilnius&lr=lang_lt

3. Pages originating from specified country: cr=country

Example: www.google.com/search?q=vilnius&cr=countryLT
Note that the two country code characters have to be in UPPERCASE ! Otherwise Google ignores the parameter (as of 2017-01-03) (even though lower case works fine for hl= and lr=lang_).

There is another parameter - gl= - for search results as they would appear in specified country. I tried testing it, but for me results were not differing for different parameter values. Maybe that's obsolete or overwritten by some other paremeters/settings of browser or my Google account.

Web Interface Language Codes

hl=af          Afrikaans
hl=ak          Akan
hl=sq          Albanian
hl=am          Amharic
hl=ar          Arabic
hl=hy          Armenian
hl=az          Azerbaijani
hl=eu          Basque
hl=be          Belarusian
hl=bem         Bemba
hl=bn          Bengali
hl=bh          Bihari
hl=xx-bork     Bork, bork, bork!
hl=bs          Bosnian
hl=br          Breton
hl=bg          Bulgarian
hl=km          Cambodian
hl=ca          Catalan
hl=chr         Cherokee
hl=ny          Chichewa
hl=zh-CN       Chinese (Simplified)
hl=zh-TW       Chinese (Traditional)
hl=co          Corsican
hl=hr          Croatian
hl=cs          Czech
hl=da          Danish
hl=nl          Dutch
hl=xx-elmer    Elmer Fudd
hl=en          English
hl=eo          Esperanto
hl=et          Estonian
hl=ee          Ewe
hl=fo          Faroese
hl=tl          Filipino
hl=fi          Finnish
hl=fr          French
hl=fy          Frisian
hl=gaa         Ga
hl=gl          Galician
hl=ka          Georgian
hl=de          German
hl=el          Greek
hl=gn          Guarani
hl=gu          Gujarati
hl=xx-hacker   Hacker
hl=ht          Haitian Creole
hl=ha          Hausa
hl=haw         Hawaiian
hl=iw          Hebrew
hl=hi          Hindi
hl=hu          Hungarian
hl=is          Icelandic
hl=ig          Igbo
hl=id          Indonesian
hl=ia          Interlingua
hl=ga          Irish
hl=it          Italian
hl=ja          Japanese
hl=jw          Javanese
hl=kn          Kannada
hl=kk          Kazakh
hl=rw          Kinyarwanda
hl=rn          Kirundi
hl=xx-klingon  Klingon
hl=kg          Kongo
hl=ko          Korean
hl=kri         Krio (Sierra Leone)
hl=ku          Kurdish
hl=ckb         Kurdish (Soranî)
hl=ky          Kyrgyz
hl=lo          Laothian
hl=la          Latin
hl=lv          Latvian
hl=ln          Lingala
hl=lt          Lithuanian
hl=loz         Lozi
hl=lg          Luganda
hl=ach         Luo
hl=mk          Macedonian
hl=mg          Malagasy
hl=ms          Malay
hl=ml          Malayalam
hl=mt          Maltese
hl=mi          Maori
hl=mr          Marathi
hl=mfe         Mauritian Creole
hl=mo          Moldavian
hl=mn          Mongolian
hl=sr-ME       Montenegrin
hl=ne          Nepali
hl=pcm         Nigerian Pidgin
hl=nso         Northern Sotho
hl=no          Norwegian
hl=nn          Norwegian (Nynorsk)
hl=oc          Occitan
hl=or          Oriya
hl=om          Oromo
hl=ps          Pashto
hl=fa          Persian
hl=xx-pirate   Pirate
hl=pl          Polish
hl=pt-BR       Portuguese (Brazil)
hl=pt-PT       Portuguese (Portugal)
hl=pa          Punjabi
hl=qu          Quechua
hl=ro          Romanian
hl=rm          Romansh
hl=nyn         Runyakitara
hl=ru          Russian
hl=gd          Scots Gaelic
hl=sr          Serbian
hl=sh          Serbo-Croatian
hl=st          Sesotho
hl=tn          Setswana
hl=crs         Seychellois Creole
hl=sn          Shona
hl=sd          Sindhi
hl=si          Sinhalese
hl=sk          Slovak
hl=sl          Slovenian
hl=so          Somali
hl=es          Spanish
hl=es-419      Spanish (Latin American)
hl=su          Sundanese
hl=sw          Swahili
hl=sv          Swedish
hl=tg          Tajik
hl=ta          Tamil
hl=tt          Tatar
hl=te          Telugu
hl=th          Thai
hl=ti          Tigrinya
hl=to          Tonga
hl=lua         Tshiluba
hl=tum         Tumbuka
hl=tr          Turkish
hl=tk          Turkmen
hl=tw          Twi
hl=ug          Uighur
hl=uk          Ukrainian
hl=ur          Urdu
hl=uz          Uzbek
hl=vi          Vietnamese
hl=cy          Welsh
hl=wo          Wolof
hl=xh          Xhosa
hl=yi          Yiddish
hl=yo          Yoruba
hl=zu          Zulu



Search Language Codes

lr=lang_af    Afrikaans
lr=lang_ar    Arabic
lr=lang_hy    Armenian
lr=lang_be    Belarusian
lr=lang_bg    Bulgarian
lr=lang_ca    Catalan
lr=lang_zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
lr=lang_zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
lr=lang_hr    Croatian
lr=lang_cs    Czech
lr=lang_da    Danish
lr=lang_nl    Dutch
lr=lang_en    English
lr=lang_eo    Esperanto
lr=lang_et    Estonian
lr=lang_tl    Filipino
lr=lang_fi    Finnish
lr=lang_fr    French
lr=lang_de    German
lr=lang_el    Greek
lr=lang_iw    Hebrew
lr=lang_hi    Hindi
lr=lang_hu    Hungarian
lr=lang_is    Icelandic
lr=lang_id    Indonesian
lr=lang_it    Italian
lr=lang_ja    Japanese
lr=lang_ko    Korean
lr=lang_lv    Latvian
lr=lang_lt    Lithuanian
lr=lang_no    Norwegian
lr=lang_fa    Persian
lr=lang_pl    Polish
lr=lang_pt    Portuguese
lr=lang_ro    Romanian
lr=lang_ru    Russian
lr=lang_sr    Serbian
lr=lang_sk    Slovak
lr=lang_sl    Slovenian
lr=lang_es    Spanish
lr=lang_sw    Swahili
lr=lang_sv    Swedish
lr=lang_th    Thai
lr=lang_tr    Turkish
lr=lang_uk    Ukrainian
lr=lang_vi    Vietnamese

Sources:
https://sites.google.com/site/tomihasa/google-language-codes
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/how-to-see-google-search-results-for-other-locations/25203/

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You can add a custom search engine (instructions) to Chrome with the following settings:

Name: Google English
Keyword: geng
URL: https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=%s&hl=en&lr=lang_en

Now you can press Ctrl+l or (command+l on Mac) to go the address bar. Then you type "geng {your query}" to search only in this language. For other languages you need to probably guess or do some reverse engineering by checking the URL to know what value to use instead of lang_en.

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On my Google homepage (and hopefully other's), there is a Settings button in the lower right corner. If you pull up that menu, you can select Advanced Search. The Google Advanced search page gives drop down boxes and text boxes to specify many (all?) of the advanced search options.

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  • If you are logged in, you can now do this simply by clicking your user icon at the top right corner, then Language. You can change display and/or results language, and region.
    – Kamal
    Commented Aug 2 at 16:11
-2

In fact instead of modifying the url, just add it to your search at the end, like « cycle exercise lr=lang_en » to search for « cycle exercise » and get only English results. Tested, it works.

List of url parameters https://moz.com/blog/the-ultimate-guide-to-the-google-search-parameters

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    This doesn’t work for me. It treats the “lr=lang_en” part as a searched-for element.
    – Alex
    Commented Jan 5, 2019 at 11:13