New: Translate your books in Book Creator!

Lainey FranksEquity and Inclusion, Feature update, Languages, News, Special Education

Translate text, audio, comments, video captions - even whole books! All with one click.

We're really pleased to announce our latest feature update, which we know will have a big impact on classrooms around the world. Using the technology developed for Google Translate, you can now translate in Book Creator.

Translate books

Translating a book

With just one click you can now translate a whole book into the language of your choice! Hit the Translate book button and the book will appear on your library shelf - just be sure to check the formatting as words may be longer/shorter in another language.

Just think - not only can you use this for classroom resources, but also to engage parents with newsletters, or to equitably serve all teachers with staff manuals and PD resources.

Translate text

Translating English text to Spanish

Inside a text box, just click the Translate button and choose from over 100 languages to convert your text in an instant.

Translate audio

English and Spanish audio on the page

This is really fun - you can now translate your voice into other languages and generate a spoken translation with AI. If you know how to record audio onto the page already, you can just right-click the audio hotspot and click 'Translate'.

Translate comments

The teacher and student have translated comments and replied

Hopefully you've been using the feedback and commenting feature in Book Creator? Now both the teacher and the student can translate text comments to better understand each other.

Translate video captions

Translated captions on a video

Adding captions to videos is an accessibility feature we released in 2020. Well now, you can take those captions and instantly translate them into another language.

Read your translated book

Changing the language of the Read to Me

Using Book Creator's Read to Me function, you can choose the language you want your translated book to be read in. Just click the Read to me button and it will read in that language.

Support: How to use the Translate tool in Book Creator

Supporting multilingual learners

Book Creator has been a favorite tool of ESL teachers for many years, thanks to the multimodal features that allow English learners to express themselves in a variety of ways, including voice, video, image, drawings and emojis.

As such, I was delighted to share the news with some of our Book Creator Ambassadors that we are now adding translations into Book Creator. They had so many great ideas about how this feature would support their students.

Melissa Eaton
Stevie Frank
Paul Hopkins
Adele Leccia
Jessica Mucci
Simona Ghenea

Jennifer Ives

Elisabetta Nanni

Tamoco Hill

Hue-An Wren

Alex Isaacs

Michelle Gill

Building relationships with "Newcomers"

The number of Multilingual Learner students in American classrooms is growing quickly, as is the number of different languages that are being spoken, making it very challenging for teachers to get to know their students, build relationships with them, and assess their progress.

One of our Ambassadors told me about the important yet difficult task of getting to know "Newcomers" when they join their school. This inspired us to create a special ‘Newcomer Edition’ of our All About Me book.

Vibrant cover of the 'All About Me Journal - Newcomer Edition' with a playful blue background filled with colorful icons like a pencil, butterfly, music note, and globe. The title is bold, with 'By Your Name' displayed at the bottom, inviting personalization

In this book, instructions are available in written and audio form, both of which can be translated so that your Newcomers can work in their native language. Teachers can then translate their content back into English, so teachers can understand and so that students can see what they’ve written in English.

You could extend this idea to a weekly journal, enabling teachers and other adults who support students in the school to check in on a regular basis throughout the year.

So, just remix this book into your library to get translating!

And to get you started, here's one we made earlier - translated into Spanish

Newcomer Journal - Spanish

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3 Comments on “New: Translate your books in Book Creator!”

    1. Hi Karen! Yes they can translate text on a page or comments/feedback as long as the teacher has a Premium license and has turned it on in the library settings.

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