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Dual-language print books work because you are always looking at two pages at a time. You can ignore the left (or right) page, depending on which language you are using.
I'm quite interested in dual-language ebooks, but I don't think the current formats provide enough flexibility.
Ideally, the underlying format would allow you to define the document structure (at least down to paragraphs) independently of the content, and then pour in the content in whatever language you like. Reader software could then offer option to display two (or more) view panes, each with a different language, but linked so the page turns synchronize. Or they could toggle between languages while maintaining the current reading position.
You can sort of do the latter of these things now by hyperlinking a text with its translation in some other part of the ebook, but current ebooks assume text is linear, links are not always very usable (depending on the reader) so there are some issues with doing it that way.
But HTML5, and some Javascript support could make it easier to do something.
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