Translating in Outlook and the on-the-fly window

Translating selected text

Task menu

• English – into your first language, no questions asked. The entry is named after the language it is set to.
• Translate – asks for the target language; your second language is preselected.

Both need selected text in an open email. A translation never appears as a marked-up change – the text is replaced.

Translate on-the-fly

Task menu ▸ Translate on-the-fly

Opens a small window that stays alongside Outlook. You type or paste text at the top; the translation appears below.

It is meant for an ongoing exchange in a foreign language: you leave the window open and work in it, instead of invoking a menu command for every sentence.

The language fields

• Source language – leave it empty for auto-detection; the field then shows (auto).
• Target language – what it translates into.

What clicking in the result does

The result field responds to mouse clicks, and that is where its real value lies:

• Click on a word – selects it and copies it to the clipboard.
• Select text – it is copied automatically after a brief pause.
• Click on the selection – in the upper field: translate back into the source language. In the lower field: use it as the new input text.

So you can sanity-check a translated sentence by translating it back – the quickest way to notice a translation that has gone askew.

Other buttons

Copy 2 and Clear 2 for the second field; Collapse shrinks the window without closing it.