A system for user-directed acquisition over a wide area network includes a client computer, a database having information data relating to user-entered text of HTML pages, and a server computer having a program software stored on the storage device to receive a user-entered word data in a first language from the client, to receive a user-entered geographic search area data from said client, and wherein the program software is associated with software for generating a translation language pair data and for translating the word data in accordance with the language corresponding to the user entered geographic search area data, software for accessing said information data as a function of the translated word data, and software for transmitting the accessed information data to the client-computer. A method is also provided.