See translations with the mini translator

Sometimes you might receive email messages or documents that contain words in different languages whose meaning you are unsure of. With the Microsoft Office Mini Translator, you can point to a word or selected phrase with your mouse and the translation displays in a small window. The Mini Translator also includes a Play button so you can hear an audio pronunciation of the word or phrase, and a Copy button so you can paste the translation into another document.

Notes: 

• The Mini Translator is only available in OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, and Word.

• If you are a Microsoft 365 subscriber, you will have the translate text into a different language feature to translate text and documents, in place of the Mini Translator feature.

What do you want to do?

Turn on or off the Mini Translator

Set the Mini Translator language

Use the Mini Translator

Research a word

Copy a translation to the Clipboard

Play a word or phrase

Turn on or off the Mini Translator

To use the Mini Translator, you need to make sure that it is turned on by clicking Review, in the Language group, click Translate, and then click Mini Translator.

If Mini Translator is selected , it is turned on.

If Mini Translator is not selected , it is turned off.

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Set the Mini Translator language

The list of languages available the Mini Translator depends on the language version of Office you are using. To learn more about translation language pairs, see Translate text in a different language.

1. Click Review, in the Language group, click Translate, and then click Choose Translation Language.

2. In the Translation Language Options dialog box, under Choose Mini Translator language, click the language that you want from the Translate to list.

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Use the Mini Translator

After you have set the translation language and enabled the Mini Translator, point to a word in your file to see the translation.

Note: These videos don't have any sound. They are just showing you what you click and some results you can expect to see.

See translations with the Mini Translator in Word

See translations with the Mini Translator in PowerPoint

See translations with the Mini Translator in Outlook

See translations with the Mini Translator in OneNote

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Research a word

With the Mini Translator turned on, you can research a foreign language word to get more information.

1. Point to a word in your document.

2. To open the Research pane, in the Mini Translator, click Expand.

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Copy a translation to the Clipboard

You can easily copy the contents of the Mini Translator pane to the Clipboard, and then paste it into another document, such as an email message.

1. Point to a word in your document.

2. In the Mini Translator, click Copy.

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Play a word or phrase

If you are unsure about how to say a word in a different language, you can use the Speak feature to hear the word being spoken. For this feature to work, you need to download a text-to-speech engine in the language or languages that you want to use. To learn more, and to download TTS engines, see Using the Speak feature with Multilingual TTS.

To hear a foreign-language word being spoken, do the following:

1. Point to a word in your document.

2. In the Mini Translator, click Play .

   Note: You can also hear phrases being spoken by selecting the phrase, pointing to it, and then clicking Play.

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