Translation and language detection functions come to Excel

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Translation and language detection functions come to Excel
Microsoft are introducing two new functions to Excel: TRANSLATE (to translate passages of text into another language) and DETECTLANGUAGE (to determine the language in which a particular passage of text is written).

Posted by Andy Brown on 03 July 2024

In this blog

When you'll get the new functions
The TRANSLATE function syntax
The DETECTLANGUAGE function syntax

You can now translate text from one language to another in Excel using the TRANSLATE function (*):

Here we're translating from English (en) to French (fr).

(*) Except - you can't, or at least I can't (the above diagram was faked). Read on for more details!

When you'll get the new functions

The Microsoft blog page announcing the new language functions says that the feature is available if you're using Excel on the Beta Channel, which I am:

Most people won't be using the Beta Channel, but I have switched to this (the sacrifices I make for this newsletter!).

Here's my version:

This shows I'm using a build later than the minimum version required.

Microsoft do warn that "features are released over some time to ensure things are working smoothly", so I guess I just need to wait a bit!

The TRANSLATE function syntax

This function takes up to 3 arguments:

Argument	What it shows	Example
1	The text you want to translate	The cat sat on the mat
2	The language you're translating from	en (ie English)
3	The language you're translating to	tlh-Latn (ie Klingon)

Over 100 languages are supported: you can see a list here.

The DETECTLANGUAGE function syntax

This function is even simpler, taking just one argument:

Argument	What it shows	Example
1	Text written in a foreign language	Le chat s'est assis sur le tapis

The above example would return fr, since the text is written (I hope!) in French.

This is an impressive new feature, although the common errors are worrying (one is Test Too Long, and another is You have exceeded your daily quota of the translation function).

Some other pages relevant to the above blog include: