Google Translate

1. What is Google Translate?

   Google Translate is a free automatic translator. It works without the intervention of human translators, using state-of-the-art technology instead. Google Translate currently supports translation between dozens of languages:

   Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Armenian (Alpha) Azerbaijani (Alpha) Basque (Alpha) Belarusian Bengali (Alpha) Bosnian Bulgarian Catalan Cebuano (Alpha) Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish Dutch English Esperanto Estonian Filipino Finnish French

   Galician Georgian (Alpha) German Greek Gujarati (Alpha) Haitian Creole (Alpha) Hebrew Hindi Hmong(Alpha) Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italian Japanese Javanese (Alpha) Kannada (Alpha) Khmer (Alpha) Korean Lao(Alpha) Latin Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian

   Malay Maltese Marathi(Alpha) Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Tamil (Alpha) Telugu (Alpha) Thai Turkish Ukrainian Urdu (Alpha) Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish

   Translation to and from Alpha languages may not work as well as other languages, as these systems are still in early stages of development. Learn more about the inner workings of Google Translate.

2. Google Translate basics

   Translate text instantly

   To translate words and phrases, simply select your translation languages and start typing. The translation result should appear instantly as you type, without you having to click a single button. Note that you'll need Javascript enabled to take advantage of our instant translation feature. You can always click the Translate button to trigger a translation.

   When you translate a single word, you may see a simple dictionary at the bottom indicating parts of speech and possible word variations. For most language pairs, you'll also see a View Detailed Dictionary link. This will display a more detailed Google Dictionary page with example sentences, images, and more.

   If you aren't sure what language you're attempting to translate, the "Detect language option" can figure this out for you. The accuracy of the automatic language detection increases with the amount of text entered.

   Read and listen to your translation

   If you're trying to translate to a non-Roman script, you'll see a Read phonetically link next to the translation. Clicking this link will spell out the translation in Roman(Latin) characters. This feature is currently available for Armenian, Belarusian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Georgian, Greek, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Maltese, Russian, Serbian, Thai and Ukrainian.

   For many languages, you may see also a speaker button near the translated text. Click this icon to hear a machine-generated spoken version of your translation. This feature is currently available for English, French, German, Haitian Creole, Hindi, Italian and Spanish.

   An experimental text-to-speech system (TTS) is available for several other languages, powered by the eSpeak open-source speech synthesizer:
   Afrikaans, Albanian, Catalan, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Latvian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese and Welsh. You may notice significant differences in speech quality between the experimental languages and the other available languages.

   Input text phonetically

   Many languages are difficult to type if you don't own a special layout keyboard for that script. When translating from Russian, Hindi, Serbian, Greek, Arabic, Persian or Urdu, you'll see an "Allow phonetic typing" checkbox near the input area. This feature allows you to type these languages as they sound in English - for example, "aap" for "आप" in Hindi. When you press space, the word will be converted to Hindi script, and its translation will be displayed below. The phonetic typing feature is on by default; uncheck the checkbox to turn it off, when you want to input Roman characters. Phonetic typing does not interfere if you are using a native-layout keyboard for such languages.

   If you still have questions about Google Translate and want to learn more, or would like to give us your feedback, please see the Google Translate discussion group.

3. Translate whole webpages and documents

   Translate entire webpages

   Translate an entire web page directly from Google Translate, simply by entering its address (e.g. "www.google.com") into the input box and clicking Translate.

   If you hover your mouse over the translated text, the original text for the highlighted segment is displayed in an info bubble just above the translated text. To see all of the original text of the page, click the View: Original radio button in the top frame of the translated page. Now, when you hover your mouse over the original text, the automatic translation for the highlighted segment is displayed in an info bubble.

   Translate documents from your computer

   Google Translate also provides an easy way to translate whole documents, without the need for copying and pasting large blocks of text. Simply click the translate a document link and submit your file as a PDF, TXT, DOC, PPT, XLS or RTF. Please note that some of your original formatting may not be preserved.

   If you need to create and translate content in other languages and would like to improve your efficiency and accuracy using translation tools like automatic translation, translation search and glossaries, use the Translator Toolkit. This allows you to translate and edit your documents online, and collaborate with others. Learn more about the Translator Toolkit

4. How can I help improve Google Translate?

   Contribute a better translation

   We're constantly working to improve the quality of our translations. Even today's most sophisticated software, however, doesn't approach the fluency of a native speaker or possess the skill of a professional translator. Automatic translation is very difficult, as the meaning of words depends on the context in which they're used. While we are working on the problem, it may be some time before anyone can offer human quality translations. In the meantime, we hope you find the service we provide useful for most purposes. If, while using Google Translate, you notice that our translation could be better, hover your cursor over the translated term and click Contribute a better translation to suggest improvements.

   Help us support new languages

   We're also working to support other languages and will introduce them as soon as the automatic translation meets our standards. It's difficult to project how long this will take, as the problem is complex and each language presents its own unique challenges. In order to develop new languages and improve the quality of existing languages, we need large amounts of bilingual texts. You can help by using Translator Toolkit for translating or uploading your translation memories into Translator Toolkit.

5. General information for webmasters

   Preventing translation of your webpages

   If you're a webmaster and would prefer your web page not be translated by Google Translate, just insert the following meta tag into your HTML file:
   <meta name="google" value="notranslate">

   If you don't mind your web page being translated by Google Translate, except for a particular section (like an email address, for example), just add class=notranslate to any HTML element to prevent that element from being translated. For example:
   Email us at <span class="notranslate"> sales at example dot com

   From time to time, we may feature certain website URLs on Google Translate to provide demonstrations of our translation technology. Such examples should not be seen as an endorsement by Google of these websites or their content. If your site is featured in this way on Google Translate, and you would rather it weren't, please contact us.

   Search engine indexing

   The automatically translated version of your web page will not be indexed by search engines.

Website Translator plugin for websites

1. What is the Website Translator plugin?

   The Website Translator is a plugin powered by Google Translate that can be easily and quickly added to any website to make your website available in other languages. After you add the Website Translator to the pages on your website, your international visitors will be offered the option to view a translated version of your website.

   Visitors to your website whose web browser language is different than the language of your website will see an info banner at the top of the page asking them if they'd like to translate the page. Visitors can also translate the page by using the Website Translator's language selector that's embedded in the page

   When a visitor translates a page, the Website Translator sends the text of the web page to Google Translate and displays the translated text without reloading or redirecting visitors from the page. If the visitor clicks on a link in the translated page and the linked web page also has the Website Translator plugin embedded in it, the linked web page will also be automatically translated for the them, allowing them to seamlessly browse through your website in their language.

2. How do I add the Website Translator plugin to my page?

   Visit the Website Translator setup wizard and follow these simple steps:

   1. Enter the URL of the website you'd like to add the Website Translator plugin to
   2. Select the language that your web page is written in.
   3. Select the translation languages you would like to make your web page instantly available in. You can pick all languages, or select individual languages by selecting the "Specific languages" radio button, then checking the languages you'd like to automatically translate your web page into.
   4. Choose the way you'd like the Website Translator plugin to be displayed on your page.
   5. Copy the customization meta tag and paste it before the closing tag in the HEAD section of the web pages that you'd like to e
   6. And finally, copy and paste the Website Translator plugin code snippet into the BODY section of web pages that you would like to make instantly available in other languages.

3. How can I improve the automatic translation of my website?

   You can improve the automatic translations on your website by creating (1) correction entries and/or (2) glossary entries.

   A correction entry can be used to improve the translation of specific text segment. The correction entry will only replace the automatic translation of the text segment if it matches it completely.

   A glossary entry can be used to improve the translation of a particular word or short phrase that may frequently appear in several text segments. The glossary entry will replace the automatic translation of the word or short phrase in any text segment that contains the source word or short phrase.

   Corrections

   The best and easiest way to add a correction is to do it in-context on the translated version of the webpage. Here’s how:

   1. Make sure the Website Translator plugin has been added to the page
   2. Translate the web page use the Website Translator’s language dropdown
   3. Hover your mouse cursor over the translation you’d like to correct. The phrase or sentence will be highlighted and a tooltip window displaying the original text will appear.
   4. If you’re not logged in with your Google Account, click Sign in.
   5. Click on Contribute a better translation and submit the corrected translation

   The next time any user translates the page, your correction will appear instead of the automatic translation.

   The correction will also appear in the Website Translator manager where you can edit or delete it.

   Glossaries

   Glossary entries can be helpful if your site contains special terminology such as advanced scientific, medical, technical text, etc that require specific translations. For example:

   English to French: batching box => bassin de dosage (instead of dosage boîte)

   It can also be useful to help ensure that product names or company names are translated the way you’d like. For example:

   English to Chinese: Google+ => Google+ (instead of 谷歌+)

   Glossaries work best for nouns or noun phrases (1-2 words in length). They’re not as effective when used for verbs or when translating into languages that are highly inflected.

   Glossary entries should be used with caution since they can have unintended consequences and can impact many translations.

4. How can I link to a translated version of a web page?

   To create a link that automatically translates your Website Translator-enabled page without prompting your users, use the parameter #googtrans(en|TARGET_LANG_CODE). For example, the link http://translate.google.com/support/#googtrans(en|fr) automatically translates the page http://translate.google.com/support/ into French.

5. What else should I know about the Website Translator plugin

   Collected information

   For normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. The website translator also works securely if it's embedded on a web page that is served from a secure server. In such cases, the content of the web page will be sent to Google for translation using a secure connection (HTTPS), and Google will not log any of the text.

   Embedding on intranet pages

   The Website Translator plugin will work if it's embedded on a web page that's hosted within a corporate intranet. However, since the Element cannot distinguish intranet web pages from normal web pages, intranet web pages are handled like normal web pages. So unless it is hosted on a secure server, a secure connection will not be used to send the content of the web page to Google for translation. As with the translation of normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. Please check with your system administrator or IT department before embedding the Translate Web Element on intranet pages.

   AdSense

   The Website Translator plugin will not interfere with AdSense code that may be embedded in your page.

6. How do I manage translation suggestions from visitors?

   When a visitor views the translation of your site using the Website Translator plugin or web page translation feature in Chrome or Google Toolbar, they can suggest a better translation by hovering the mouse cursor over the translation they’d like to correct. The phrase or sentence will be highlighted and a tooltip window displaying the original text will appear. The visitor can then click on Contribute a better translations and submit the corrected translation

   Suggestion will appear in Website Translator manager for you or another authorized Editor to approve. To approve a suggestion:

   1. Check the checkbox next to the suggestion
   2. Then click the Approve button below
   3. The suggestion then becomes a correction and will appear on the Corrections page

   The next time any user translates the page, the correction will appear instead of the automatic translation.

7. How do I invite editors to help manage the translations?

   You can invite editors to help add correction/glossary entries and approve suggestions in the Website Translator manager:

   1. Click on the Editors link in the left navigation bar.
   2. At the bottom of the Editors table, enter a Google Account email address in the text field and click invite
   3. An email invitation with you cc-ed will be sent to the email address you entered

8. What else should I know about the Website Translator plugin?

   Collected information

   For normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. The website translator also works securely if it's embedded on a web page that is served from a secure server. In such cases, the content of the web page will be sent to Google for translation using a secure connection (HTTPS), and Google will not log any of the text.

   Embedding on intranet pages

   The Website Translator plugin will work if it's embedded on a web page that's hosted within a corporate intranet. However, since the Element cannot distinguish intranet web pages from normal web pages, intranet web pages are handled like normal web pages. So unless it is hosted on a secure server, a secure connection will not be used to send the content of the web page to Google for translation. As with the translation of normal web pages, Google may log a small portion of the text for translation quality purposes but not in a way that is associated with a Google Account. Please check with your system administrator or IT department before embedding the Translate Web Element on intranet pages.

   AdSense

   The Website Translator plugin will not interfere with AdSense code that may be embedded in your page.

Google Translate Partners

1. European Patent Office

   The European Patent Office (EPO) and Google have been working together to develop Patent Translate, a translation service optimised for patent documents. The EPO's Espacenet website provides free access to millions of patent documents worldwide, and its users can use Patent Translate to read patents from around the world in their own language.

   Learn more:

   • Use the EPO-Google Patent Translate Service
   • Read about the EPO-Google Partnership