Easy Translations

by Allen Wyatt
(last updated December 26, 2013)

You've probably used Google's translation site before in order to do elementary translations from one language to another. (You can find it by visiting http://translate.google.com.) Now Sheets brings the power of Google Translate directly into your spreadsheet. All you need to do is use the GOOGLETRANSLATE FUNCTION, in this manner:

=GoogleTranslate(A1, "en", "es")

In this example, the function returns a translation of whatever is in cell A1 from English ("en") to Spanish ("es"). You could, if you wanted, also provide cell references for the source language and the target language:

=GoogleTranslate(A1, A2, A3)

When specifying a source and target language, use the two-character designation for langauges. Some of the more common designations are en (English), sp (Spanish), fr (French), ja (Japanese), ko (Korean), etc. You could, if desired, also tell Google to figure out what the source language is, in this manner:

=GoogleTranslate(A1, "auto", A2)

This example translates whatever is in cell A1 (after Google figures out what language it is) into whatever language you specify in cell A2.

Author Bio

Allen Wyatt

With more than 50 non-fiction books and numerous magazine articles to his credit, Allen Wyatt is an internationally recognized author. He  is president of Sharon Parq Associates, a computer and publishing services company. ...

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