How to Create a Google Sheet that Translates Languages

If you work with content in multiple languages, you may find yourself frequently switching to Google Translate. A more efficient way to handle this is by using Google Sheets’ built-in translation formula, which saves time and reduces errors.

Try it for yourself

Google Translate Formula

Use the Google Translate formula in Sheets like this:

=GOOGLETRANSLATE(C2,"en","es")

To use this formula:

Type =GOOGLETRANSLATE in an empty cell.
Select the cell with text to translate (in this case, C2).
Specify the source language code (e.g., "en" for English).
Specify the target language code (e.g., "es" for Spanish).

For instance, =GOOGLETRANSLATE(C2,"en","es") translates text from English to Spanish. To translate Spanish to English, switch the language codes to =GOOGLETRANSLATE(C2,"es","en").

Detect Language Formula

If you’re unsure of the original language, use the =DETECTLANGUAGE formula:

=DETECTLANGUAGE(A2)

This function identifies the language of the specified cell, returning its two-letter code.

2-Letter Language Codes for Google Sheets

Below is a table of language codes that you can use:

Code	Language
AF	Afrikaans
SQ	Albanian
AM	Amharic
AR	Arabic
HY	Armenian
AZ	Azerbaijani
EU	Basque
BN	Bengali
BS	Bosnian
BG	Bulgarian
CA	Catalan
ZH	Chinese
HR	Croatian
CS	Czech
DA	Danish
NL	Dutch
EN	English
ET	Estonian
FI	Finnish
FR	French
DE	German
EL	Greek
GU	Gujarati
HT	Haitian Creole
IW	Hebrew
HI	Hindi
HU	Hungarian
IS	Icelandic
ID	Indonesian
GA	Irish
IT	Italian
JA	Japanese
JW	Javanese
KO	Korean
LA	Latin
LV	Latvian
LT	Lithuanian
MK	Macedonian
MS	Malay
ML	Malayalam
MT	Maltese
NO	Norwegian
FA	Persian
PL	Polish
PT	Portuguese
PA	Punjabi
RO	Romanian
RU	Russian
SR	Serbian
SI	Sinhalese
SK	Slovak
SL	Slovenian
ES	Spanish
SW	Swahili
SV	Swedish
TA	Tamil
TE	Telugu
TH	Thai
TR	Turkish
UK	Ukrainian
UR	Urdu
VI	Vietnamese
CY	Welsh
YI	Yiddish

Using these codes with the Google Translate function in Sheets can streamline the process of working with multiple languages.