If you need to translate text from one language into another, there is a handy built-in function in Google Sheets called GOOGLETRANSLATE that will do this.
In this tutorial, I will show you how to use the GOOGLETRANSLATE function in Google Sheets.
Table of Contents
GOOGLETRANSLATE Syntax
The GOOGLETRANSLATE function will convert text from one language into another.
The syntax of the function is:
=GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language, target_language])
- text – this is the text that will be translated from the source language to the new language. It must be text inside quotation marks or a cell reference to a cell containing the text
- source_language – this is the two-letter language code of the source language. This argument is optional and will be set to “auto” by default.
- target_language – this is the two-letter language code of what you want the source language translated into. This argument is optional and will be set to the system language by default.
Using the GOOGLETRANSLATE Function
To understand how to use the GOOGLETRANSLATE formula in your spreadsheet, let’s take a look at an example:
In the example above I have three formulas.
This first formula converts English to Spanish, the second converts English to Vietnamese, and the third formula converts English to French.
You can see in the example above that using the Google Translate formula is very easy, you just need the text you are translating, and the language codes of the source and target language.
The language codes need to be inside quotation marks like in the example above.
Here is a table of some of the language codes that are supported with this function:
| Language Name | Native Language Name | Code |
| Afrikaans | Afrikaans | af |
| Albanian | Shqip | sq |
| Arabic | عربي | ar |
| Armenian | Հայերէն | hy |
| Azerbaijani | آذربایجان دیلی | az |
| Basque | Euskara | eu |
| Belarusian | Беларуская | be |
| Bulgarian | Български | bg |
| Catalan | Català | ca |
| Chinese (Simplified) | 中文简体 | zh-CN |
| Chinese (Traditional) | 中文繁體 | zh-TW |
| Croatian | Hrvatski | hr |
| Czech | Čeština | cs |
| Danish | Dansk | da |
| Dutch | Nederlands | nl |
| English | English | en |
| Estonian | Eesti keel | et |
| Filipino | Filipino | tl |
| Finnish | Suomi | fi |
| French | Français | fr |
| Galician | Galego | gl |
| Georgian | ქართული | ka |
| German | Deutsch | de |
| Greek | Ελληνικά | el |
| Haitian Creole | Kreyòl ayisyen | ht |
| Hebrew | עברית | iw |
| Hindi | हिन्दी | hi |
| Hungarian | Magyar | hu |
| Icelandic | Íslenska | is |
| Indonesian | Bahasa Indonesia | id |
| Irish | Gaeilge | ga |
| Italian | Italiano | it |
| Japanese | 日本語 | ja |
| Korean | 한국어 | ko |
| Latvian | Latviešu | lv |
| Lithuanian | Lietuvių kalba | lt |
| Macedonian | Македонски | mk |
| Malay | Malay | ms |
| Maltese | Malti | mt |
| Norwegian | Norsk | no |
| Persian | فارسی | fa |
| Polish | Polski | pl |
| Portuguese | Português | pt |
| Romanian | Română | ro |
| Russian | Русский | ru |
| Serbian | Српски | sr |
| Slovak | Slovenčina | sk |
| Slovenian | Slovensko | sl |
| Spanish | Español | es |
| Swahili | Kiswahili | sw |
| Swedish | Svenska | sv |
| Thai | ไทย | th |
| Turkish | Türkçe | tr |
| Ukrainian | Українська | uk |
| Urdu | اردو | ur |
| Vietnamese | Tiếng Việt | vi |
| Welsh | Cymraeg | cy |
| Yiddish | ייִדיש | yi |
Closing Thoughts
The GOOGLETRANSLATE function is a useful formula for translating text from one language into another. Not every language is supported with this function but they do support many common languages.
One important thing to note is that the translation is not always perfect, so just keep that in mind when you are using this function.
More Google Sheets Tutorials:
How to Refresh Formulas