How to translate documents and text in Word on Mac

Word Translate Document on Mac

If you use Microsoft Word on your Mac for creating documents, then you know it has some nice features. And if you’re writing something that you want to translate into another language, Word has that feature built right into it.

You can translate an entire document or just specific text. So if you want to send or share your work with someone speaking a different dialect, in business for example, this is handy.

Here’s how to translate documents in Word for Mac.

Translate your selected text in Word

Open Word on your Mac to the document you want to translate. Then follow these steps.

1) Click the Review tab at the top of the Word window.

2) Select the text you want to translate. Click the Translate button and choose Translate Selection.

3) A sidebar will open on the right side to the Selection tab. And the text you selected should automatically appear in the From box at the top. Word should auto-detect your language, but you can make a selection from the drop-down box as well.

4) Choose the To language in the box below and you should see the translation immediately.

If you’d like to replace your selected text with the translated text, click Insert.

You can also reverse translation by clicking the Swap button between the two text boxes.

MS Word Translate Selection Mac

Translate your entire document in Word

If you need to translate your whole document, Word on Mac makes this easy too.

1) Choose the Review tab at the top of the Word window.

2) Click the Translate button and choose Translate Document.

3) If you’ve selected a language before, the sidebar will open and the document will automatically translate to that dialect immediately. (We’ll show you how to do this in the next section.)

If not, select a language in the To drop-down box (and one in the From box if needed) and click Translate.

MS Word Translate Document Mac

Your translated document will open in a new window and the formatting you applied should be retained as well.

Frequent translations to the same language

If you plan to translate your documents to a specific language often, you can set the default. On the Review tab, click the Translate button and pick Select Document Translation Language.

MS Word Select Translation Language Mac

Once you do this, whenever you click the Translate Document option from the Translate button, your document will be translated and open in a new window automatically.

Wrapping it up

With communications happening all over the world via email, social media, websites, and other business avenues, knowing how to do quick translations of your documents in Word is convenient. Hopefully this is a feature that will also come to Apple Pages down the road.

What types of things do you find yourself doing in Microsoft Word the most? Is there a particular feature you’d like to know more about? If so, please let us know here or on Twitter and a tutorial may come of it!

For more, take a look at how to change text and formatting AutoCorrect settings in Word and how to customize keyboard shortcuts in Microsoft Word for Mac.