What is Google Translate and how to use it absolutely easily?

Google TranslationTranslation

What is Google Translate and how to use it absolutely easily?

No Comments
Read Time: 4 minutes

Let’s talk about Google Translate – Your one-stop destination for all your translation needs!

Translation is an integral part of our lives. Whether you are a student looking for quick translations of some study material, a business professional working on taking your website to an international level, or a tourist visiting a foreign country, translation is needed everywhere, and you need it on a regular basis.

However, the art of translation is not that easy. We mean, think about it. How can you translate words or sentences without having any knowledge of the language? Additionally, you may need to have expertise in multiple languages at once. Too much work, isn’t it?

Google Translate
Translation, Photo by JACQUELINE BRANDWAYN on Unsplash

Well, thanks to technology, you now have a variety of softwares, and tools to help you with all your translation needs. You can use these tools on your personal computers, laptops, and smartphones by using the website interface or the application. Furthermore, they are easy to use, and user-friendly!

This brings us to one of the best translation tools out there in the market – Google Translate. Google Translate is a popular tool, that is widely used in most fields such as academics, business, and more. And, guess what? Whether you are tech-savvy or not, it is extremely easy to use.

If you want to learn more about translation, and why it is important, feel free to check out our post on skilled translation, and its importance. In this post, we’re going to take a look at what Google Translate is, and how to use it.

What is Google Translate?

What is Google Translate?
What is Google Translate?

Google Translate is a free multilingual neural machine translation tool created by Google. It’s not your regular English to some-other-language dictionary, but an extensive, and highly intelligent tool that helps you translate words, sentences, documents, and even a complete website easily without any complication.

It can also translate multiple forms of text, and media, and even still or moving images. Goggle Translate offers a website, mobile applications for Android, and iOS, and even an application programming interface.

It was launched in April of 2006, and was initially released as a statistical machine translation service. When it was first created, it used, and analyzed documents from the United Nations, and the European Parliament to gather linguistic data.

Google Translate provides you with more than a hundred languages to choose from. As of March 2021, it supported 109 languages from around the world.

Some of its notable features are Written Words Translation, Website Translation, Document Translation, Speech Translation, Mobile App Translation, Image Translation, and Handwritten Translation.

To learn, and improve, Google Translate continuously scans, and studies the translations made by millions of human translators worldwide. This means it scans these texts looking for statistically significant patterns, and keeps on learning more, and more.

Pretty cool, isn’t it?

You must be wondering how does it exactly work? Well, Google Translate is an AI-powered tool, and all of its translations come from computers that use statistical machine translation.

In simple words, it is a process in which computers work, and generate translations based on patterns found in large amounts of text.

However, it is important to note the fact that Google Translate is powered by artificial intelligence. This means that even if it does the job of translating really well, it is not completely reliable. Online translation tools can never replace professional translators.

Thus, it is advised to not use this tool while doing some serious translation, like translating your website. As far as casual translation is concerned, Google Translate is the perfect fit for you. But do not rely on an AI tool for important tasks, as official business communications.

How to use Google Translate?

There are a variety of ways that you can use, to use Google Translate on your device. For example, you can use a Chrome extension, and even specialized apps designed for Android, and iOS. Here, we are going to take a look at one of the easiest ways to use Google Translate – that is by using its website interface.

The process is quite simple. To begin with, go to translate.google.com. The website looks something like this –

Google Translate website interface
Google Translate website interface

You will now see two different sections. On the left, you will find the input section, where you can type the text that you want to translate. The tool will automatically detect the language of the text that you have entered.

On the right is the translation section, where you will find a bunch of languages to choose from. You can click on the desired language in which you want your text to be translated.

Now, just click on translate, and whatever you typed or pasted in the left section, will be automatically translated into the language of your choosing. Take a look at the following example.

Translation through Google Translate
Translation through Google Translate

You can also find the document option, where you can add any document, PDF, or even an excel file, and then translate it into your desired language.

There is also alisten option available on both the input as well as on the output side. You can use this option to listen to the input as well as the output of the translation, and listen to the pronunciation of the words that you have entered or translated.

An useful feature that you will find here is theswap feature, present in the middle of both sections. This feature allows you to swap the language, which means the input language becomes the output language, and vice-versa.

Another notable feature of Google Translate is its Translate by voice feature. This allows you to input the text, just by speaking exactly what you want to translate. Just click on the little microphone icon, say what you want to translate, and then press stop.

It may sound basic, but it is an extremely useful feature. Imagine you are a Hindi-speaking person in the streets of Spain. Now chances are solid that you need to figure out how to get to somewhere, and you do not know Spanish.

In such a situation, you can use this feature, which will help you translate both sides of a conversation, and Google Translate thus acts as an interpreter between you, and the other person. Thus, it won’t be an overstatement to say that Google Translate has almost everything one needs, when it comes to translation.

Conclusion on Google Translate

As translation is an important part of our lives, we need good translation tools that are efficient, and easy to use. And, if you are looking for a tool that is easy to use, does the job amazingly well, and is also free, Google Translate is the answer for you!

However, even though it is highly advanced, and efficient, it has its flaws. Therefore, it is advised to not use it for translations concerning advanced copywriting, official business communications, and website building.

As far as casual translation is concerned, feel free to use Google Translate by making use of its dedicated website interface, or its mobile application.

This brings us to the end of our discussion. However, this discussion isn’t over yet! Feel free to leave us a comment down below if you have anything to say about Google Translate or about this post. For more posts on translation, check out our blog

Previous Post
Best Intranet Softwares and How To Set Up Intranet for companies!
Next Post
The Best Translation Apps for Android devices to use immediately

Related Posts

5 1 vote
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
0
Would love your thoughts, please comment.x
()
x