Office document translation (updated)

Posted on August 6, 2008by Microsoft Translator

Update: Check out the new installer you can download to make this really easy!

Windows Live Translator is now integrated into Office! One of the top features that our users ask for is simple integration of translation into Office, to translate a document quickly. The feature is really easy to use, and you can translate a block of text or an entire document, from within Office.

We have officially handed over our code to the Microsoft Office team for the integration of the translation tool directly in the Research Task Pane. Once they have finished their own testing and “flipped the switch” on their side, the feature will auto-update in existing versions of Office. I’ll blog about that here again when that happens – at that point, no additional setup steps will be necessary.

In the meantime, you can use the instructions below to set up the service manually. For users of Office 2003, I’ll post those instructions later this week.

Office 2007 Setup Instructions:

1) Click on the Review Tab

2a) Open the “Proofing” ribbon (if not already open)

2b) Select Research to open the research pane

3) In the research pane, go to the Research Options dialog

After you’ve chosen the “Research” task pane, there should be a “Research options” hyperlink at the bottom of the pane. Click on this hyperlink to bring up the task pane.

4) Select the “Add Services” button

5) Enter the URL of the Microsoft Translator Web Service

Here you’ll need to type in the address of the Microsoft Translator Web Service:
http://www.windowslivetranslator.com/officetrans/register.asmx

Then click the “Add” button to continue.

6) Install the Microsoft Translator services

Just click the “Install” button in this dialog.

Note that you can’t check any of the boxes; this is expected behavior. Translation systems, unlike other Research Pane plug-ins, are enabled in a different dialog. The next steps will cover this.

Now click “OK” to close the research options dialog.

7) From the drop down box on the Research Pane, select the Translation subpane

At this point, Word may bring up a dialog saying, “Microsoft Word can’t open the translation feature. This feature is not currently installed. Would you like to install it now?” Click “Yes” to install the feature.

8) Bring up the Translation options dialog

Just below the combo boxes that allow you to select the source and target language, there should be a hyperlink labeled “Translation options..”. Click on it to open the translation options dialog. (Depending on what text you have highlighted and which translation features are installed and enabled on your machine, the Research task pane may look slightly different. That’s OK; just find the “Translation options…” hyperlink.)

9) Pick Windows Live Translator as your translation engine

This is where you specify which translation engines you’d like to use for each language pair. By default Word uses WorldLingo for all language pairs; this is where you can choose Windows Live Translator instead. (Certain Word installations don’t seem to come with WorldLingo pre-installed, so you may not have to change anything here.)

The language pairs currently available from Windows Live Translator are as follows:

English ? Chinese (Simplified)

English ? French

English ? German

English ? Italian

English ? Arabic

English ? Chinese (Traditional)

English ? Dutch

English ? Japanese

English ? Korean

English ? Portuguese (Brazil)

English ? Spanish

You may have slightly different settings for Bilingual Dictionaries (on the top half of the dialog); that’s OK. You only need to look at and change the Machine Translation settings (on the bottom of the dialog). Again, if Windows Live Translator is already selected, you don’t have to do anything.

Click OK to close the dialog. You are now ready to translate!

Using the Translation Feature

Now find or create a document that has some content you’d like to translate.

1) Select text and click Translate

The easiest way to bring up and use the translation task pane is to simply select some content in your Word document, and click on the Translation icon in the Review tab. You can also go to the Research task pane, type a query into the box, and select the Translation subpane.

2) Select an installed language pair

By default, Word will list a variety of language pairs, even if you haven’t installed a machine translation system for those pairs. In the “From” and “To” boxes, select a source and target language that correspond to one of the language pairs you installed above.

3) Inspect your translated output

After a brief delay (during which the web service is invoked and the selected text is translated), the translated text should appear in the research pane.