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| Image [cc] Za3tOoOr! |
Nothing really irritates a researcher more than attempting to get to a website only to find that it has been blocked by your network software. In fact, many of you may find that social media sites are closed off at work because someone decided that you’ll spend your time uploading cat videos instead of your real job. Hey!! Cat videos are a fun way to relieve stress, and it really doesn’t take that long to upload. Sorry… got off topic there. Back to the blocked websites.
Most of the time you can call your IT Department and have them exclude you from the ‘blocked’ list (and I highly suggest that you do this first!), but there may be times where you just need to quickly get to the site and get the information. It’s really easy, and it kind of shows that blocking websites might be a lesson in futility. The key is using translator sites, such as Bing Translator or Google Translate as a proxy. Here’s the simple instructions. If you want more information, you can view this Reddit thread, provided that IT hasn’t blocked Reddit.
Steps:
- Open translator: (I’ve found Bing to be a bit easier, but both work.)
- Enter the Blocked URL in the translate box
- Click on the Translate button
- Voilà, the translator is feeding the page through and is bypassing your web blocker.
Note: Sites that are not supported by the translator (e.g., Netflix, Spotify, or secured websites) will not work with this method. I’ve found a few sites, like Online-Translator that work around some of these issues (by telling it to translate from German to English), but nothing is 100%.
Here’s a good video that walks through the process. Again, this isn’t 100% perfect, but I’ve found it to be pretty helpful when I was in a bind and needed to get to a blocked website… strictly for research purposes, of course.