Translate foreign-language documents into English

Launch a web browser and visit the Google website. If you don’t already have a free Google account, get one by clicking Sign in at the top right followed by the Create an account now link and then following the instructions. If you already have one, sign in and when the page loads, click the Documents link at the top. If this is the first time you’ve used Google Docs, click the Close button to remove the Getting Started pop up. Then, click the Upload button to get going.

The first step is to upload the document that needs translating. Click the Select files to upload link and use Windows Explorer to navigate to the location where the document is stored. Select it by clicking on the file name once and then click the Open button. After the document’s uploaded, click to place a tick in the empty box next to the ‘Convert documents, presentation, spreadsheets and drawings to the corresponding Google Docs formats’ and then click Start upload.

When the document has uploaded, click the Back to Google Docs link at the top. At the next screen you’ll see the document listed in the main window. If this is the first time you’ve used Google Docs, it’ll be the only document in the list. To open it, just hover the mouse pointer over the document name so it turns into a pointing hand and click once. And here’s the document opened in Google Docs – in Spanish. To start translating, open the Tools menu and choose Translate document.

Google Docs ‘understands’ loads of different languages, including all major European tongues, Chinese, Hindi, Hebrew and Japanese. Naturally we’re using English so we’ll just pick that off the list. At the next dialogue box we can replace the existing document name with a new one or leave it as it is before clicking the OK button to start the translation. Remember, we’re expecting a translation that will allow us to get the gist of the document – not word-for-word grammatical accuracy.

The translation takes a few seconds (don’t be concerned if the text disappears for a moment, it’ll come straight back) and once it’s finished mistakes can be edited in Google Docs, if you like. Here, for example, we can see that ‘Spanish Translate from’ should probably read ‘Translate from Spanish’. Save the translated document by opening the File menu and choosing Download as and then selecting a format – we’re choosing Word.

When Windows displays the File Download dialogue box, click the Save button and then at the next screen, choose a location for the translated document – we’re storing ours on the Windows Desktop, for convenience. And here’s the result, the translated English document opened in Microsoft Word with the original Spanish version displayed as a Google document in the browser window behind it. The punctuation and grammar may be a bit loose, but as a starting point – or to get a rough translation – this is a really good, free service.