Using Machine Translation Services

>Meetinghouse Technology > Technology Specialist

Articles on MHTech are written and published in English. This article discusses how to use publicly available machine translation services to translate MHTech articles into your preferred language.

CHOOSING A MACHINE TRANSLATION SERVICE

There are many free machine translation services, such as Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, and DeepL Translator. Some common applications, such as Microsoft Office programs and the Google Chrome web browser, have built-in machine translation services. Those who read the MHTech articles in a language other than English should decide for themselves which machine learning services are best for them.

HOW TO USE COMMON MACHINE TRANSLATION SERVICES

To use common machine translation services such as Google Translate, Bing Microsoft Translator, or DeepL Translator, copy the text from the MHTech article and then paste it into the input text entry box on the translation service’s page. If it is a long article, you may need to copy and paste the article for translation in pieces. This is because most free machine translation services have a character limit (often 5,000) for each entry. Most translation services will auto-detect that the inputted text is English; if not, you will have to select English as your input language. Then select the desired language for the translation box. The translation should then appear next to the original text.

Some machine translation services, such as Google Translate and Bing Microsoft Translator, also allow you to copy a URL and have an entire page translated. To do this, copy the MHTech article’s URL and paste it in the input text box. A blue link to the translated version of the page will then appear in the translation box.

As mentioned, some applications have built-in machine translation services. Current versions of Microsoft Office applications such as Microsoft Word have translate buttons that you can access by going to the Review tab or by highlighting the text and right-clicking with the mouse.

Google Translate also has an extension that you can add to Google Chrome to allow you to translate any website. To get this extension, go to the Chrome Web Store and search for “Google Translate.” Find Google Translate offered by translate.google.com and click Add to Chrome. The Google Translate extension button should now appear at the top right of the browser window.