The Google translator
The translation of texts, documents, projects or even entire web pages is a task that many users perform several times a month. Although on the Internet we find different apps and language applications, one of the best known is the Google translator (In English Google translate).
Afree google translation service that solves our linguistic deficiencies in another language.
Be to use it as English-Spanish translator, or the reverse, from Spanish to English, not only saves us time, but we are talking about a free translation application and thanks to its latest updates - whether it incorporates artificial intelligence - the translated texts they are beginning to be more suitable.
In its day we already saw the Academic Google, and today, we are going to see a guide with different tips and tools to obtain better quality translations … How to use Google Translate?
1.- How does Google translate work?
The simplest way to understand how the Google translator It is with a simple image that we highlight the main characteristics:
As you can see in the image of the Google Translator panel, its use is very simple with the possibility of translating up to 103 languages (There are some restrictions in unusual languages that can be seen from HERE)
2.- How do you know if the text translated into English is good?
For those of us who do not have much knowledge of English from a grammatical perspective, when we translate a text, we really do not know if the translation is understandable and clear for the user who reads the text.
To solve this, there is a free tool called Hemingwayapp. It only works for texts in English, it is accessed from here and what the application tells us by means of colors is:
From a grammatical and readability perspective it's great. In addition to giving us a score on the clarity of the text, it recommends options to improve if we put the cursor over the relevant color:
Another of the most popular free tools for correct our writing in English and that we recommend, is the Grammarly application (Access from HERE). Very practical! He even checks the grammar of our Emails.
To explore its potential, it is best to access its Google Chome extension from HERE (You need to have a Grammarly account first, and then download the extension). For example, we can correct the texts of Google Docs:
Once we have the corresponding permissions. When opening a document, we will see the Grammarly icon at the bottom right of the page, indicating that it is working.
There are also several English grammar checkers that will help us write better based on Artificial Intelligence. We directly recommend Linguix which is free premium, but for normal length texts and sentences, the free version is sufficient. A simple to use and very powerful tool:
And not only will it help us to create better texts in Anglo-Saxon (even at a business level) avoiding possible errors, but it will also help us to improve our level of English, if it is the case, with the possibility of creating our personal dictionary.
3.- Fast translations with Chrome extension
For those of us who spend all day diving on the web and changing languages. This is the Google Chrome extension that uses Google Translate and that, without hesitation, is the most useful.
We can access it from HERE to add it to the browser. It is very simple to use, once added to the extensions section, we will only have to press the right button of the mouse to bring up a menu with the option «Translate to Spanish«.
We can use it in two ways:
- Mark a text on the screen, right mouse button and translate … Perfect as English-Spanish translator.
- Or we simply want to translate what we are seeing on the computer screen. Right mouse button and translate (it does NOT open a new window and it is faster).
4.- Google translator app on mobile
Of course, another tip is to have it on mobile. A google translate app for use on an Android mobile or an iOS smartphone.
- Download the Google Android translator app… From here.
- Download app for ductor from Google iOS… From here.
With quite remarkable characteristics to interpret texts such as:
- You can translate in total between 103 languages by typing.
- Touch text: copy text into any application and the corresponding translation will appear.
- Even if you don't have an internet connection, you can translate.
- Instant translation with a camera photograph: Instantly translate texts in 38 languages.
- You can use it for two-way instant voice translation.
- Vocabulary Utility: highlight and save translations in any language for later reference.
- It's also great for text transcription on Whatshapp. An icon will appear on the screen when it recognizes a different language.
When using the phone's camera to translate a menu, posters or other text that you find, the Google Translate application will show us immediate translations directly on the phone screen (if you have downloaded the language pack). It comes in handy when you travel!
The conversation mode is very good. Use the microphone of the mobile to obtain translations quickly, either to translate conversations between the user and the foreign speaker or, if we touch the red button on the microphone, it will be in direct conversation mode where it will hear both languages and will offer translations in real time.
5.- How to translate a complete website?
Thanks to the versatility of this tool, we can translate a complete website - for example from Spanish to English - in a very easy way. The trick is to add the URL of the web, as indicated in the following image:
Remember, that as we have indicated previously, with the Chorme extension of the Google translator it is much easier transcribe texts into another language.
Keep in mind that this also works to learn English, we can use it as Spanish to English Translator.
6.- How to translate documents with the Google translator?
When we have to present documents in another language or simply transcribe them into Spanish, we have the opportunity to upload documents and have a translation done automatically.
First we have to make sure that our document is in the right size and format. Documents can be uploaded in file format; Microsoft Word in .doc and .docx format, plain text with the extension .txt, in HTML, in excel format with .xls or .xlsx, in .pdf or even in Power Point with .ppt and .pptx.
each translated document can be up to 1MB in size
As an alternative to English translator from Google, if we have a larger document, we can access a free online application specialized in documents from HERE. That in addition to pouring the information into another language, we can divide the PDFs or pass a PDF to Word. It is very interesting!
We can also translate larger documents with Google DocI know it's free. We enter from HERE (We log in as a user), upload the document and click on the tools section:
It will ask us to add a new name and the choice of language. It's that easy!… Keep in mind that translations through Google Docs maintain the structure of the document very well, be it in PDF or Word. Another utility for translate from English to Spanish!
As a note, instead of documents, if we want translate videos and we do not find out because the subtitles are in English or any other language.
How to put Spanish subtitles on videos? You have to follow the following four steps to automatically add subtitles to YouTube (It is essential that the author, when uploading the video, allows transcribe voice adding subtitles automatically):
Reproduce texts in other languages from the video format it is already a reality that it works quite well.
Remember, we can lower the "playback speed", it can be translated better, and sometimes Americans speak very fast and it needs to be played a little slower to understand it correctly.
7. What should I keep in mind in grammar?
Focusing on Spanish to English. The precision of the automatic translation it depends on the amount of linguistic content being compared. The larger the volume of content, the more accurate it will be. Therefore, Google translate It is usually better in languages to and from English.
From experience, when we want translate a text into English or other languages, we should be careful with:
- Colloquial expressions, set phrases, or bombastic phrases should be avoided (In case of need to contrast phrases, you can use Word Reference, it is better)
- Texts should be in Spanish - neutral Castilian to avoid irreconcilable expressions or pronunciations.
- It translates better contexts than individual and single sentences.
- It should be written in clear language, without mistakes, check spelling and grammar. To give you an idea, translations of newspaper articles are pretty good.
- Do not abuse the use of the gerund. The gerund is much more frequent in English than in Spanish and we cannot always translate it as accurately.
- Do not abuse the passive voice.
- If you don't know how to translate something, but you can recognize that Google Translate is still misinterpreting it, try breaking the phrase - text into smaller parts.
8.- Quality Google translator alternatives
Although on the net we can find several tools and online dictionaries that allow us decent translations, the only translator that surpasses Google Translate is the Deepl translator (We can access it from HERE) based on artificial intelligence.
Unfortunately, the free account has limitations in thetext transcription to English, with a maximum of 3000 characters. So it will only be useful for small texts and it has few languages, which are; English, French, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish and Russian.
With Deepl's online application we can also translate Microsoft Word (.docx) and PowerPoint (.pptx) documents with the free version. In addition to these two file formats, paid subscribers can also use files in .txt format.
An example of Deepl compared to the translation carried out with Google talking about foundations would be:
Although it is similar, the syntax is better!
Another alternative is the Microsoft Translator (From HERE) that can translate text, web pages, voice, images, all kinds of documents and complete conversations, either in a browser or via mobile device.
Reproducing texts in other languages is already a reality that is done quite well. And remember that recently we also saw another Google application to create 360º virtual tours that may be useful for our projects.
Bonus: Google Home as a translator
In this case, and as a curiosity, the intelligent assistants that we can buy have a peculiarity that is sometimes useful; They can be real-time interpreters of everything we speak, that is, we speak in Spanish and, automatically, the device will pronounce it in English or the chosen language. A smart interpreter who can't even come in handy in the office.
Operating the Assistant in Interpreter mode is quite simple:
- First, a "Ok Google, activate the interpreter" … will be enough for the speaker to begin its configuration process.
- He will ask us … What language do you want me to translate into? (Remember that in the configuration of the app, you must have configured several languages)
- We comment on the language we want it to reproduce.
- We begin to speak slowly and the assistant will interpret everything we comment.
Although the system is not perfect, it can get us out of trouble.
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