GOOGLETRANSLATE for Excel

How Google Sheets’ GOOGLETRANSLATE compares with the native TRANSLATE function in Microsoft 365 Excel.

Google Sheets has a GOOGLETRANSLATE function that translates text directly within a spreadsheet. Excel now has a similar native function, TRANSLATE, so Excel users can translate multilingual data without leaving the workbook. This post covers the Google Sheets function and its Excel counterpart.

Update (September 2026): Microsoft’s current documentation lists TRANSLATE for Excel for Microsoft 365, Excel for Microsoft 365 for Mac, and Excel Mobile. It is a service-backed function and Microsoft documents a daily translation quota; exceeding it returns a Request Throttled error.

GOOGLETRANSLATE

GOOGLETRANSLATE is a popular function in Google Sheets that allows users to translate text directly within their spreadsheets. It’s a powerful tool for working with multilingual data and has become an essential feature for many users. It translates text from one language to another with a simple function syntax of GOOGLETRANSLATE(text, [source_language], [target_language]).

TRANSLATE in Excel

Microsoft 365 Excel provides the TRANSLATE function, which plays the same role as GOOGLETRANSLATE. It takes the text to translate, an optional source language, and an optional target language:

=TRANSLATE(text, [source_language], [target_language])

For example, to translate a cell A1 from Spanish to English, you would use:

=TRANSLATE(A1, "es", "en")

Because the function is backed by Microsoft’s translation service, the text in the cell is sent to that service to be translated. Check Microsoft’s documentation for the current language support and quota limits before relying on it for large volumes.