Translation with GoogleTranslate service in Google Sheets
Translation service more so by Google has been a life savior for many people. Its interesting when in a different country and two way communication is an issue because of the language barrier. This happened to me several times when I lived in China.
I noted the other day that Google incorporated their translation API in Google sheets which is a vital took when one wants to translate to several languages in one place and probably print out a copy to carry along.
Syntax for the translation is as below : —
GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language, target_language])
Entry in a cell is the same way you’d enter a formula in Excel i.e.
= GOOGLETRANSLATE (“text/cell with the text to be translated”, “original language code of the text-Can be set to auto for automatic language detection”,”language to be translated into”).
You’re good to go once you press enter. A few screenshots from my Google Sheets detailing the entire process.
- Create a new Google Sheet. Created in Google Drive.
2. Input the source languages statements to be translated. I’ll be translating to several languages so such a tabular format makes sense. Formula to translate to Swahili is shown in the below screenshot. Remember to use short codes for languages found here . The output in the next screenshot largely makes sense in Swahili (I’m a native speaker) but its a very direct translation. All in all, anyone who knows the language will understand.
3. Overall output across the languages for the first sentence will be something close to what is in the below screenshot.
Hopefully, the translations make sense. You can always drag the fill downwards to fill in the other cells with translations just like in Excel. Do the same for the other languages.
4. Final output when all cells are filled should be as below.
To a large extent, the translations service in Google Sheets is a huge addition to conventional tasks. For data scientists, this would be a good place to get translated data, save it and train a multilingual model. Hope you experiment on the same. Do not forget to leave a comment or question in case of any doubts.
