Abstract: A method for cross language information retrieval includes receiving an input query which includes at least one word in a source language and translating the input query from the source language to a target language to provide a set of translated queries. A set of documents is retrieved from a document collection based on the translated queries. The retrieved documents are translated back into the source language to generate a set of translated documents. An entailment relationship between each of the translated documents and the input query is assessed. The set of translated documents is refined, based on the assessment of the entailment relationship. A subset (or all) of the refined set of translated documents, and/or the target documents to which the translated documents in the subset correspond, is output.