How to use Google Translator in Google Sheets

What is Translator?

Translator is a cloud-based neural machine translation service that is part of the Azure Cognitive Services family of REST APIs. Translator can be used with any operating system and powers many Microsoft products and services used by thousands of businesses worldwide to perform language translation and other language-related operations. In this overview, you’ll learn how Translator can enable you to build intelligent, multi-language solutions for your applications across all supported languages.

Translate text from one language into another with this simple formula in Google Sheets

Whether you’re a student studying a new language or a tourist encountering new words, the Google Translate formula in Google Sheets provides you with an easy access list of what you know, or want to know.

To get started simply enter a word in one language in a cell, and then use the formula =GOOGLETRANSLATE(cell with text, “source language”, “target language”) in another cell to translate it. You can even drag the fill handle at the bottom of the formula cell down to apply this formula to more than one cell.

Here’s an example, translating English words into Spanish:

=GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2, “en”,”es”)

Sample Usage

GOOGLETRANSLATE("Hello World","en","es")

GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2,B2,C2)

GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2)

Syntax

GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language, target_language])

text – The text to translate.
- The value for text must either be enclosed in quotation marks or be a reference to a cell containing the appropriate text.
source_language – [ OPTIONAL – "auto" by default ] – The two-letter language code of the source language, e.g. “en” for English or “ko” for Korean, or “auto” to auto-detect the language.
- If source_language is omitted, target_language must also be omitted.
target_language – [ OPTIONAL – system language by default ] – The two-letter language code of the target language, e.g. “en” for English or “ja” for Japanese.

Examples

Translates text in the specified range from the source language into the target language.

1	text	Result	Formula
2	Hola, ¿cómo estás?	Hi! How are you?	=GoogleTranslate(A2, “es”, “en”)
3	こんにちは	안녕하세요	=GoogleTranslate(A5, “auto”, “ko”)
4	北京欢迎您	Beijing welcomes you	=GoogleTranslate(A4, “auto”)