Some of the content in this topic may not be applicable to some languages.

Microsoft Office 2003 provides translation services that use local and online bilingual dictionaries and machine translation on the Web. With the new Research feature, you can simply press ALT and click a word in your document to retrieve translation results in the Research task pane.

Bilingual dictionaries and machine translation

Translation services provide a richer experience if you are connected to the Internet. If your search does not find results in the dictionaries installed on your computer, available translations will be returned from online dictionaries. You can customize these options through the Research task pane.

You can translate single words or short phrases by using bilingual dictionaries. However, machine translation services on the Web can translate phrases, paragraphs, or your entire document. This technology is helpful for conveying the basic subject matter of the content and for confirming whether the content is relevant to you. For important or sensitive documents, human translation is recommended, because machine translation may not preserve the full meaning (including tone) of the text.

Security  When you send text to the Web for translation services, your document is sent in an unencrypted HTML format.

Translation services beyond Microsoft Word

In previous versions, only Microsoft Word provided translation functionality. With the new Research feature you can translate text in any of these products: Microsoft Office Excel 2003, Microsoft Office OneNote 2003, Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2003, Microsoft Office Publisher 2003, Microsoft Office Visio 2003, Microsoft Office Word 2003, and Internet Explorer.

The first time you use translation services, you will be required to install the client dictionaries. After installing, the online dictionaries are available automatically when you connect to the Internet. From Translation options in the Research task pane, you can add and remove the language pairs available to you. If you do not see the bilingual dictionary you want, you may need to install the Microsoft Proofing Tools.