14 DAY TRIAL // Google has so many projects and services at this point that it seems that the greater hassle is not creating new ones but just getting them to work together. This can be a burden but also a blessing as all Google has to do is link two services and, presto, new functionality. This is the case now with Google Docs, the company's cloud-based office and collaboration suite, which just got an automated translation feature courtesy of Google Translate.
“My cousin is in first grade and sometimes she writes short stories for class. I try to share the stories with her grandparents, but because Japanese is their first language and they don't speak English very well, it's been tough. Today we're releasing a feature for Google Docs to make this kind of multi-lingual sharing easier — you can now automatically translate documents into 42 different languages,” Rita Chen an intern at Google working on Docs writes.
There is another, more professional example over at Google's Enterprise Blog but the feature is really more suited for mainstream and casual use. Using the new translation tools is as straightforward as it gets; users just have to go to the Tools menu and select the Translate option. They get to choose from the 42 available languages and in a matter of seconds Google translates the document, while retaining all of the formatting and layout, in the desired language. Users can then decide if they want to overwrite the original document or make a new translated copy.
Using the feature is no hassle but the results, as with all machine translations, are spotty at best. While in most cases the translated version will be good enough for the users to understand the original meaning it can hardly pass as a human translation, which makes it less useful in cases where quality is the main concern. Still it could prove a very useful feature if all users want to do is get the message across.