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How to Automatically Generate Vocabulary Flashcards with Google Translate and Anki

1-minute read • Updated on

I learned a great technique from Dale on how to automatically translate lists of vocabulary words with Google Translate. I’ve created a video tutorial of the process and embedded it below.

Here are the tools mentioned in the video:

An example usage of the Google translate function is: =GoogleTranslate(A1,"it","en") which would translate cell A1 from Italian into English.

Google Translate language codes

If you don’t know the language code for a certain language, just go to Google translate and select the two languages you want. Then look at the URL in the language codes will be in the URL. For example, translating Greek to English would give you this URL: translate.google.com/#el/en/ which would tell you that the language code for Greek is “el”.

After dragging the Google Translate function down the column, export the file as CSV and import it into Anki or whatever flash card or spaced repetition program you use. To remember the words more easily, you can create mnemonics for them.

Don’t forget to follow the new YouTube channel. (There’s also an older one here.)

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Comments

Fabio
Fabio

That's awesome man! Really loved this idea, because I'm a little lazy to create anki decks!

Completely not related, but let me share something really nice with you

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Arvo
Arvo

Hi, good job :) Do you know, how to add a voice to the cards in the same way?

Lane
Lane

Often thought of doing this; thanks for showing me an example.

Josh Cohen
Josh Cohen

@Arvo: I don't know of an automatic way to add a voice, but you can manually add sounds to Anki cards.

Lane
Lane

Arvo, I have looked for this also, and haven't found much. :( IF you do find a method, let us know here, OK?

Lane
Lane

I finally found a good method to at least get the sounds. Now if I could just get Anki to let me import them...does anyone know how to make it work? I get cygwin errors (which is strange considering I don't have cygwin installed on my computer) when I try. Here's the method: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwPxYzVPcow&google_comment_id=z12mcfhxsyzvvzzhc04chvkayvi1sn4qzik

Roman Galeev
Roman Galeev
Fred Ehrhardt
Fred Ehrhardt

Thank you for sharing this technique. FYI, if the list of words is not long (sorry I don't know the limit), you can paste multiple words directly into https://translate.google.com and get a similarly-formatted output list, which may be sufficient for some uses.

Andrew Sanchez
Andrew Sanchez

Use the AwesomeTTS plugin for Anki to generate sound for your cards. https://ankiweb.net/shared/info/301952613

Andrew Sanchez
Andrew Sanchez

This is an excellent technique. Thank you!