Document translation: Word, PDF, PowerPoint, Excel (2024)

FAQs

Why did document translation fail Word? ›

Try repairing your Office installation: Repair an Office application - Microsoft Support. If the issue persists, try resetting the translation settings in Word. To do this, go to File > Options > Language > Set the default language > Choose the language you want to translate from and to > Click on "Reset" button.

In your document, highlight the text you want to translate. Select Review > Translate > Translate Selection. Select your language to see the translation.

Excel has a built-in translation feature which can translate the data in your spreadsheet into numerous supported languages, broadening its accessibility.

What makes it exceptionally difficult is when you need to translate between languages with completely different structures (for example, subject-verb-object vs. subject-object-verb sentence structures). This means translators often must add, rearrange, and remove words for the translation to make sense.

The most frequent translation errors are syntactic, followed by semantic errors. Some of the other significant errors likely to occur in translation include the usage of incorrect phrases, wrong words, inconsistency in the tone or style, incorrect word-to-word translation, etc.

If you're not sure what language your PDF file is in, you can set the input language to “Detect language.” Click Choose File and then the blue Translate button. Google will then translate the text. You will get a pop-up with the PDF file translated.

Google Translate formulas are not natively available in Microsoft Excel. However, there are a number of third-party add-ins that can be used to translate text in Excel. You can also use Excel's built-in functions or write custom VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) code to perform language translation.

First, open your Excel spreadsheet and select the text you wish to translate. Then, on the toolbar, select Review > Translate. The translator menu will appear on the right, where you can set the source language and the target language. Keep in mind that the translation will only appear on the menu.

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.

The GOOGLETRANSLATE function in Excel is used to translate text from one language to another using the Google Translate API. The syntax for the GOOGLETRANSLATE function is as follows: GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language], [target_language]) - text: This is the text or cell reference that you want to translate.

What are the problems with word-for-word translation? ›

A literal word-for-word translation may sound unnatural, may not convey the expected meaning, and may be difficult to read for the target audience.

The most common causes is lack of knowledge about linguistic aspect of the target language can cause the errors. Another primary factor is the anxiety of the translators themselves causes the errors in translation.

According to As-Safi(2006: 1), there are two types of losses: inevitable loss, which occurs due to the divergent systems of the two languages; and translator's failure to present the convenient equivalence; and the avertable loss, which occurs due to the translator's inability to find the suitable equivalent.

Concepts. Concepts unknown or less known to a culture are difficult to translate because there are no corresponding lexemes. When translating US-specific concepts such as mobile home and foster children, translators cannot simply calque but find ways to adapt the translation such as using a descriptive phrase.