Mountain View, California — With most things it is certainly the small things that matters. If you need to dispatch a document to your clients in Spain, but your Spanish is beyond wonky, you are going to need help. Google understands that, and to solve that problem, search engine colossus has just added a cool new native translations feature inside of “Google Docs and the ability to remove smartquotes in documents will be released shortly.
This tweak comes on the heels of a major makeover to the program, and Google is making the most of its translation technology by combining it with more and more of its products. The most recent to take advantage of it is Google Docs. Well, according to the Google Docs Blog, all you have to do is head over to Google Docs, write your message, select “Translate Document” from tools, choose a new title for your translated document and one of 53 languages, and voila! (literally).
Apart from giving users the convenience of choosing from 53 other native languages, the feature does not add anything to the excellence of the translations above the standard Google Translate.
Google Docs Translation (Click to Enlarge)
“You can now translate your documents in the new editor into one of the 53 different languages from Afrikaans to Yiddish, all with just a few clicks of your mouse in your current Google documents by selecting Tools -> Translate document…. From there, you can create a translated copy of the document by choosing a title for the translated document and selecting the language you want to translate into,” Lily Xia, Software Engineer at Google, wrote.
In contrast to many software packages where translation can be quite a lengthy and arduous process, the Google Docs feature is already live now and you should see it in all documents created with the revamped document editor and is exceptionally fast.
Translation Features:
That said, it is still a Google product and as such has plenty of interesting features, including a new look that makes navigation easier with the new nav bar on the left as well as larger fonts and layout that make viewing easier. Amongst the other features are:
- Translate on the fly: As soon as the user starts typing text a translation will simultaneously appear. A single word translator is also available at the bottom of the text along with a detailed dictionary page with examples.
- Document upload: Enables users to upload an entire document, without cutting and pasting, which is then translated. Documents can be submitted as PDF, TXT, DOC, PPT, XLS or RTF.
- Translator Toolkit: Enables better translations by deploying features like automatic translation, translation search and glossaries, along with the ability to collaborate with others on translations.
- Transliteration: For Hindi, Arabic or Persian you have the option of typing the word into the input box as it sounds in English. The word will then be translated into the word in whatever script you are working in and translated.
Also if you are not sure what language you are working in, Google Translate will be able to detect it if it is on its list of languages.
Again, using it is simple enough, and Docs will ask you for a title for the translated document and the language to translate it to. However, the quality of the translation will vary and do not expect any wonders. But it delivers a small thing with large possibilities not just for Google Translate, but Google Docs as well which by the integration of an existing app has extended its reach beyond the English speaking world.