Introducing how to translate Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, emails, and more using ChatGPT!

1. What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI chat service released by the US non-profit organization OpenAI in 2022. It uses a large language model (LLM) powered by artificial intelligence, and its main feature is the ability to converse like a human. Similar services include Google's Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot.

Microsoft has partnered with OpenAI to offer Copilot, a service based on ChatGPT. Microsoft has also integrated Copilot into Microsoft 365 and Windows 11.

ChatGPT is available for free, but by subscribing to the paid plan called ChatGPT Plus, you can access features such as GPT-4, which provides more human-like responses, Advanced Data Analysis for creating and executing programming code, and the ability to create/use your own ChatGPTs.

You can have conversations like a human, create emails, blogs, and scenarios, generate ideas, summarize long texts, and perform automatic translation based on the instructions (called prompts). You can also create programs using various programming languages and write Excel formulas and functions.

Note: Please be aware that ChatGPT only contains data up to September 2021, and ChatGPT Plus only contains data up to December 2023. Therefore, if you ask for the latest information, there may be cases where we cannot provide an answer or may provide false information. If you need the latest information, please use the web browsing feature provided in our paid plan.

2. How to translate Office files, PDFs, and emails with ChatGPT?

Enter "Translate to " in ChatGPT, then you can translate documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and emails by copying and pasting them. You can specify languages such as English, Japanese, and Chinese. When translating, you can specify the type of document, such as "Translate website text to Japanese," "Translate marketing documents to English," or "Translate software technical documents to Chinese." This ensures that appropriate terms and expressions are used for each document.

If you have translated manually or made corrections after automatic translation, you can use ChatGPT to correct errors such as typos. Write "Correct grammar" or "Point out grammar errors" and paste the text to be proofread, and ChatGPT will proofread it for you.

3. Translation Accuracy

We compared the translation accuracy of ChatGPT (gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4) with DeepL using an evaluation metric called BLEU, divided by field. The results are as follows.

Translated HTML snippet: The translation field and automatic translation engine are shown below the graph, and the BLEU value is shown on the left. The automatic translation engines "gpt-3.5-turbo document-specific" and "gpt-4 document-specific" are translations specifying the document type in the prompt. For example, in the case of the IT field, instructions are given to ChatGPT to translate for IT-related documents. Additionally, when the BLEU value exceeds 0.3, it is believed to contribute to the efficiency of the translation work, and to indicate that, a red line is drawn at 0.3.

Overall, DeepL has a high translation accuracy, but ChatGPT excels in IT English to Japanese and Patent Japanese to English translations. When comparing different versions of ChatGPT, gpt-3.5-turbo may be superior in some fields, while gpt-4 may be superior in others, indicating that the latest gpt-4 is not necessarily always superior. Additionally, specifying the document type in ChatGPT tends to improve translation accuracy.

Please refer to the following article for specific translation examples.

What is the translation ability of ChatGPT? Thorough verification at each stage of translation

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ChatGPT Translation Accuracy Verification Report

4. Benefits of translating with ChatGPT

ChatGPT is capable of high-precision natural language processing. It understands the context and meaning of sentences and uses appropriate terms and expressions based on the context.

ChatGPT is compatible with multiple languages as it has been trained on multilingual data from the internet. It supports European languages including English, as well as Asian languages, and Arabic. Specifically, it supports Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Korean, Thai, Indonesian, in addition to English and Japanese.

In addition, you can adjust the translation by providing additional instructions or information to the prompt. For example, specifying the document type improves translation accuracy. You can also specify specific translations for certain terms. Furthermore, you can specify the intended audience to translate using vocabulary and expressions that are tailored to the reader.

To customize the translation using conventional machine translation engines, it was necessary to prepare a vast amount of source and translated text pairs and perform training work on the model, which required time and cost. However, with ChatGPT, you can generate the desired translation simply by adjusting the prompts. With ChatGPT, you can easily prepare your own unique translation engine.

ChatGPT is also known as "generative AI" and can literally generate text. With this feature, you can write text in the target language beyond translation. In the following example, we write the content in Japanese and then instruct to "write the email in English," resulting in the transcription of an English email. Whether in your native language or a foreign language, writing emails takes a significant amount of time, but using ChatGPT can greatly reduce the time spent on email composition.

5. Points to note when translating with ChatGPT

Although the translation accuracy of ChatGPT is sufficiently high, like other automatic translation services, there may be mistranslations or omissions. Therefore, it is necessary to verify the correctness of the translated text with human eyes, and there is no elimination of the need for manual checks called post-edit. For more information about post-edit, please refer to the following article.

Efficiently Correcting Machine Translation Errors - 4 Points of Post-editing

Also, if you generate a text like transcribing an email, you need to check if the content contains any lies or errors (also known as hallucinations).

6. About the security of ChatGPT

By default, the input data will be used to improve the model. To prevent this, access https://chat.openai.com/#settings/DataControls in your web browser and turn off the toggle switch for "Improve the model for everyone" → "Improve the model for everyone".

If you use ChatGPT via API, the data will not be used for training as described below. In other words, if software or tools are integrated with the API, using the translation function of ChatGPT from that software or tool will ensure the confidentiality of the data is maintained.

(Source: https://openai.com/policies/api-data-usage-policies)

7. Summary

ChatGPT is an AI chat service released by OpenAI that can converse like a human and also translate text. It can translate documents such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF, and emails into specified languages. While the translation accuracy is comparable to dedicated automatic translation services, ChatGPT may excel in certain fields. However, human confirmation is necessary due to potential mistranslations or omissions. Additionally, caution is advised as the default setting uses data for ChatGPT's training. By using the API, data confidentiality can be ensured.

Our company offers an automatic translation product, MTrans for Office, which is integrated with the OpenAI API. By using the API, you can utilize the translation function of ChatGPT without the risk of information leakage. With MTrans for Office, you can call OpenAI with just one click from Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to translate, proofread, and transcribe English emails. You can also create your own prompts. Try the quality and usability with a free 14-day trial.

MTrans for Office