Everything You Need to Know about Google Docs Translation

For folks who still like to use Microsoft Word in writing any document.

It’s all fun until you need to translate the entire document.

It’s when the application gives you no choice but to Ctrl-A, then Ctrl-C the document, and paste it Ctrl-V in another translation window, which could be Google Translate, DeepL, Reverso, or basically any other Machine translation tool.

But Google Docs solves this by shortcutting this old-school way and enabling the translation of a document through a few clicks.

It’s a simple productivity hack, but how far is it effective, and can you solely rely on it?

This and more we shall find out below, in the ultimate Google Doc translation you’ll ever need.

Let’s start by answering…

What is Google Doc translation?

It’s a free option among plenty- present on the tools menu of the Google Doc web/desktop version, that translates documents using Machine Translation. It’s like Google Translate but more of an all-in-one place option.

Simple enough?

How do I Translate a Google doc?

Accessing it is quite simple

Open a Google doc in the web version
Click on Tools menu
Choose “Translate Document” from the drop-down menu

When you click Translate document, a window will open that prompts you to:

Name the translated document
Choose the target language (there are 100+ languages to choose from)

After doing that, the translated document will open in a new tab, and the original document will be left as is.

Translating a Google Doc professionally

The question remains, is Google Doc translation accurate?

The answer is yes and no; because the more complex your text gets, the more inaccurate and faulty the machine translation of Google Docs can get.

Let’s take an example:

Example of Google Doc translation

I inserted a paragraph written in Arabic to be translated into English into a Google Doc.

It uses simple language and sentence structure.

This was the outcome

Without needing to take a look at the Arabic text, one can still evaluate the quality of the English translation.

It’s accurate to a great extent
The punctuation and sentence structure is correct
However, for an attentive eye, it could give away (I am machine-translated)
The wording can use some human touch and creativity.

Yet it could go below the radar.

In another attempt to test this, I used a more complicated text in English.

It’s part of a news piece about the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics 2024 in Paris

This was the translated version into Arabic.

Then I used this to back translate into English, to see if it would be any closer to the source English text.

As you can see, the result wasn’t so disappointing!

But I noticed a few issues…

Common issues with translating a Google Doc

The translation into Arabic was great, but some of the journalistic tone was lost.
Formatting problems, probably don’t work well with Left to Right, to Right Left languages.
The back translation into English was surprisingly smooth. Yet, it watered down the journalistic tone to a great extent.

Other issues that translators and users have detected include:

Not suitable for complex, legal, contextual, or sensitive content
Won’t support large files, the maximum file size is 10 megabytes. which equates to 10 pages
Obviously, it doesn’t come near skilled human translators (which is the case with most machine translation tools today.
Translation quality between language pairs is inconsistent. As you have seen in the case of two drastically different languages like English and Arabic
Formatting problems due to the difference in language direction could happen between any European language and Eastern languages like Arabic, Hebrew, and Farsi.
Requires editing because sometimes it merges headers like H1 and H2.

This might sound repelling, but the good news is that you can still tweak this to make the most out of this free tool.

Improve translations with Google Doc add-ons

Although the Google Translate option in Google Docs might not be the most professional translation, a variety of add-ons can fill in the gaps and make this tool more productive.

Add-ons to use on Google Doc translation:

Docs Paragraph Translate Add on

A free tool that supports the translation of many languages. It has word pronunciation and spelling features. Has the option to translate Source language into Bridge Language, instead of translating directly to the Target Language.

Doc Builder Add-On

It’s a productivity tool that lets you write financial or legal documents by inserting previously saved text snippets.

Doc secrets Add-On

When dealing with sensitive or confidential data, this add-on helps you conceal important info.

Text Cleaner Add-On

An advanced “‘clear formatting” feature. Preserves some formatting, and deletes annoying line breaks and extra spaces, due to copying text from other windows.

To install Add-ons, click on Extensions at the top menu of Google Docs, then click Add-ons, and then browse the name of the Add-on.

You can also add extensions like:

Grammarly: for checking grammar and spelling.
Ginger: Similar to Grammarly and has a built-in translation feature.
ImTranslator: Has a back translation feature.
Readlang Web Reader: Translates individual words and expressions which could be very helpful, especially with jargon that you might not be sure of.
Thesaurus: Helps with finding synonyms, so you can tweak the prompt translation of Google Docs with more accurate words.

Speak to Fast Trans about translating your Google Doc file

As shown, this translation feature is excellent for small translation tasks. But you can rely on it to translate legal documents like a Passport, or financial ones like Bank Statements and any of the like.