Mountain View, California — If you are operating a business empire that is spread across more than one country or region, then communicating the simplest things to your employees becomes painful; and that sometimes as well creates a blunder out of it. However, Google on Thursday, added automatic translation to Google Docs empowering users to translate documents on the spot into 42 different languages.
Google already provides an independently operated translation service called Google Translate. It allows users to plug in text and translate it to a number of different languages. Google Docs’ latest smart translation powers are based on the same technology and offer the convenience of translating documents without the need to cut-and-paste into a separate Web site or service.
The new feature, tucked away in a settings menu, is exceedingly simple to use that intelligently detects in which language the original document is written. With a document open, simply select the “Tools” option. “Translate Document” appears in the Tools listing and lets you pick which language you would prefer the document to be translated into.
Certainly, there may be other translation programs, too. A post on the Official Google Blog explains how the tech assisted a girl’s grandparents in understanding her short stories, for example.
Once the language being selected from the drop down list, it then opens the translated text into a new window, allowing you to compare and ditinguish the two side by side, more easily checking whether the translation has bungled any words or phrasing.
Click to enlarge. (Credit: CNET)
A document is translated “in a matter of seconds,” Google said in a blog post, in addition to preserving the formatting and layout in whatever the language of the document.
“Translations are not perfect, but we are continuously working on improving translation quality over time,” Google said.
A Google spokesperson explained, “We are releasing a new feature in Google Docs that lets you translate entire documents into 42 different languages.” Google’s spokesperson was honest enough to add: “This feature uses Google’s automated translation technology, so you may notice that it is not always perfect — but we do hope it makes things a little bit easier.”
Google Docs offers word processing, spreadsheet and other programs hosted on the Internet.
The Mountain View, California-based company has already built automatic translation features into its popular email program Gmail and into services such as its blog reader.
Nevertheless, this advancement, while appears to be of limited use to many people, could help Google Docs gain popularity within large corporations. If teams located in different countries are able to exchange ideas without going through separate translators or wasting time on translation dictionaries, companies will save time and money.
Supported languages include” Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh, and Yiddish.
Well, that is fairly a good list, and gives most users a head start at getting documents translated into a language that someone, somewhere can understand.