How To Translate Text In Google Sheets

Google Sheets supports the Google Translate function, just like Google Docs. What this means is that you can translate blocks of text and text contained in different cells into another language using this feature.

Google Translate feature in Google Sheets

Here is how to use it:

Open Google Sheets. To translate text, so that the results are in another language, use the following syntax:

 =GOOGLETRANSLATE[“text”, “source language”, ”destination language”]

Using caps for the GOOGLETRANSLATE function is not necessary and you can use lowercase too.

Translating text by referencing cells in Google Sheets:

The above syntax can be used for referencing cells too with text in them that have to be translated.

For example, to translate the text from cell A13, the command will be:

 =GOOGLETRANSLATE[A13, "en”, ”fr”]

translating text from cells in Google Sheets

When referencing cells, the cell address (A13 in this example) should be without quotes. This command can be entered where you would want the translated text to appear by double-clicking the destination cell.

translated text in Google Sheets

The source language here is English which is en, and the destination language is French which is fr. There are different two letter short codes for languages supported by Google Translate.

You can also re-reference the cell with the translated text as a source and use it to translate to a different language.

The command will be similar. In this example, cell B13 contains the once translated text in French. To translate this to Spanish, choose the destination cell and use the following command:

 =GOOGLETRANSLATE[B13, ”fr”, ”es”]

translating text in different languages in Google Sheets

different translated text in Google Sheets

Directly translating text in Google Sheets:

You can also directly translate any text without referencing existing cells.

To show the translation in a destination cell, use the original syntax of entering the text in quotes rather than the cell reference, followed by the source and destination languages short codes.

So, to translate something from Spanish to French, enter that text in quotes:

 =GOOGLETRANSLATE[“hola”, ”es”, ”fr”]

translate block of text in Google Sheets

This will show the translation in French in the destination cell where the formula was entered.

translated text in Google Sheets

This is quite a useful feature in Google Sheets that can make working with spreadsheets a lot more productive.

All done.

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