Have you ever needed to read a word or document that was written in a foreign language, however, since you were not fluent in the language or have a personal translator handy, you were out of luck? With Word 2007, you have your own personal translator at your fingertips. That’s because you can easily translate a single word right from within Microsoft Word.

Here’s how.

To translate a single word within Microsoft Word 2007, follow the steps below.

1. On the Review tab, click Translate. Alternatively, right-click the word in question and click Translate from the shortcut menu.
2. Click OK to install the bilingual dictionaries and enable translation service through the Research task pane.
3. In the Research task pane, under Translation, select the languages you want to translate to and from.
4. To translate a specific word, press the Alt key and click the appropriate word in your document. The results appear in the Research task pane under Translation.

If you have an entire document to translate, translating a document one word at a time is cumbersome so you can use the Web-based service to translate an entire document at once. Imagine receiving a 50-page document that needs to be translated. You could be translating the document all week.

To translate an entire document, follow the steps below.

1. Open the document you want to translate.
2. In the Research task pane, under Translation, click Translate the whole document.

Your document is sent to a third-party translation service and a translation of the document appears in your Web browser. The main disadvantage to this is that your document is sent across the Internet unencrypted, which can be a security risk if it contains sensitive information.

Tags: translation, translation services, translate