Google Sheets is an amazing platform that can do many incredible things, such as translating languages.
In this article I am going to teach you how to use the language translation formula in Google Sheets, and I am also going to give you a template that you can use to translate languages.
To translate languages in Google Sheets, follow these steps:
- Type =GOOGLETRANSLATE( to begin the language translation function
- Then type the text that you want to translate (between quotation marks), or type the address of the cell that contains the text to be translated. For example, "Hello"
- Type a comma, and then enter the two-letter language code, for the language that you are translating from (Source Language). For example "EN" for English.
- Type a comma, and then enter the two-letter language code, for the language that you are translating to (Target Language). For example, "ES" for Spanish.
- Press enter on the keyboard, and your text will be translated. In this example, the cell that contains the formula would say, "Hola"
You can also translate language by using the Google Sheets Language Translation Template that is linked below.
Get the language translator template
See more Google Sheets templates
How to use the language translator template
To use the template, follow these steps:
- Select your favorite languages from the drop down menus in column E. You can view the full list of languages and language codes in columns H and I.
- In cell A1, select the source language, or in other words the language that you are translating from
- In cell B1, select the target language, or in other words the language that you are translating to. You may also repeat this in cell C1 if you want to translate two different languages at once
- In the cells in column A, starting at row 3, type the text that you want to translate. After the text is entered, the translation will appear in columns B and C, in the languages that you selected
Cell references vs. Text
You can choose to enter text as the criteria for your GOOGLETRANSLATE formula, or you can also use cell references.
Below are two formulas which show the difference between using text, and using cell references. The first formula refers to cell A3 to specify the text to be translated, where the second formula uses simple text criteria that is entered directly into the formula..
You can use cell references for the source language and target language as well.
=GOOGLETRANSLATE(A1, "EN", "ES")
=GOOGLETRANSLATE("Hello", "EN", "ES")
All of the 2-letter language codes are listed at the bottom of this page, and are in the template as well.
Download your Google Sheets formula cheat sheet
Learn to build dashboards in Google Sheets
Google Sheets Language Translate Function: GOOGLETRANSLATE
The GOOGLETRANSLATE function will automatically translate text from one language to another. To use this function you must specify the text to translate, the source language. and the target language, as is shown in the diagram.
=GOOGLETRANSLATE(A3, "EN", "ES")
Syntax:
GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language], [target_language])Formula summary: “Translates text from one language into another.”
Google Sheets 2-Letter Language Translate Codes
Abkhazian AB
Afar AA
Afrikaans AF
Albanian SQ
Amharic AM
Arabic AR
Armenian HY
Assamese AS
Aymara AY
Azerbaijani AZ
Bashkir BA
Basque EU
Bengali BN
Bhutani DZ
Bihari BH
Bislama BI
Breton BR
Bulgarian BG
Burmese MY
Byelorussian BE
Cambodian KM
Catalan CA
Chinese ZH
Corsican CO
Croatian HR
Czech CS
Danish DA
Dutch NL
English EN
Esperanto EO
Estonian ET
Faeroese FO
Fiji FJ
Finnish FI
French FR
Frisian FY
Gaelic GD
Galician GL
Georgian KA
German DE
Greek EL
Greenlandic KL
Guarani GN
Gujarati GU
Hausa HA
Hebrew IW
Hindi HI
Hungarian HU
Icelandic IS
Indonesian IN
Interlingua IA
Interlingue IE
Inupiak IK
Irish GA
Italian IT
Japanese JA
Javanese JW
Kannada KN
Kashmiri KS
Kazakh KK
Kinyarwanda RW
Kirghiz KY
Kirundi RN
Korean KO
Kurdish KU
Laothian LO
Latin LA
Latvian LV
Lingala LN
Lithuanian LT
Macedonian MK
Malagasy MG
Malay MS
Malayalam ML
Maltese MT
Maori MI
Marathi MR
Moldavian MO
Mongolian MN
Nauru NA
Nepali NE
Norwegian NO
Occitan OC
Oriya OR
Oromo OM
Pashto PS
Persian FA
Polish PL
Portuguese PT
Punjabi PA
Quechua QU
Rhaeto-Romance RM
Romanian RO
Russian RU
Samoan SM
Sangro SG
Sanskrit SA
Serbian SR
Serbo-Croatian SH
Sesotho ST
Setswana TN
Shona SN
Sindhi SD
Singhalese SI
Siswati SS
Slovak SK
Slovenian SL
Somali SO
Spanish ES
Sudanese SU
Swahili SW
Swedish SV
Tagalog TL
Tajik TG
Tamil TA
Tatar TT
Tegulu TE
Thai TH
Tibetan BO
Tigrinya TI
Tonga TO
Tsonga TS
Turkish TR
Turkmen TK
Twi TW
Ukrainian UK
Urdu UR
Uzbek UZ
Vietnamese VI
Volapuk VO
Welsh CY
Wolof WO
Xhosa XH
Yiddish JI
Yoruba YO
Zulu ZU
Resources:
Google Sheets function cheat sheet
Google Sheets dashboards course
Now you know how to translate languages in Google Sheets, and you also have access to a template that makes translating even easier!
This content was created by Corey Bustos / SpreadsheetClass.com
