translate.md

title	Use ai.translate with pandas
description	Learn how to use the ai.translate function to translate input text into a new language of your choice with pandas.
ms.reviewer	vimeland
ms.topic	how-to
ms.date	11/13/2025
ms.search.form	AI functions

Use ai.translate with pandas

The ai.translate function uses generative AI to translate input text into a new language (of your choice), with a single line of code.

Note

• This article covers using ai.translate with pandas. To use ai.translate with PySpark, see this article.
• See other AI functions in this overview article.
• Learn how to customize the configuration of AI functions.

Overview

The ai.translate function extends the pandas Series class. To translate each input row into a target language of your choice, call the function on a pandas DataFrame text column.

The function returns a pandas Series that contains translations, which you can store in a new DataFrame column.

Tip

The ai.translate function was tested with 10 languages: Czech, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Spanish, and Swedish. Your results with other languages might vary.

Syntax

df["translations"] = df["text"].ai.translate("target_language")

Parameters

Name	Description
to_lang Required	A string representing the target language for text translations.

Returns

The function returns a pandas Series that contains translations for each row of input text. If the input text is null, the result is null.

Example

# This code uses AI. Always review output for mistakes. 

df = pd.DataFrame([
        "Hello! How are you doing today?", 
        "Tell me what you'd like to know, and I'll do my best to help.", 
        "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
    ], columns=["text"])

df["translations"] = df["text"].ai.translate("spanish")
display(df)

This example code cell provides the following output:

:::image type="content" source="../../media/ai-functions/translate-example-output.png" alt-text="Screenshot of a data frame with columns 'text' and 'translations'. The 'translations' column contains the text translated to Spanish." lightbox="../../media/ai-functions/translate-example-output.png":::

Multimodal input

The ai.translate function supports file-based multimodal input. You can translate the content of images, PDFs, and text files by setting column_type="path" when your column contains file path strings. For more information about supported file types and setup, see Use multimodal input with AI functions.

# This code uses AI. Always review output for mistakes.

custom_df["chinese_version"] = custom_df["file_path"].ai.translate(
    "Chinese",
    column_type="path",
)
display(custom_df)

Related content

• Use ai.translate with PySpark.

• Detect sentiment with ai.analyze_sentiment.

• Categorize text with ai.classify.

• Generate vector embeddings with ai.embed.

• Extract entities with ai_extract.

• Fix grammar with ai.fix_grammar.

• Answer custom user prompts with ai.generate_response.

• Calculate similarity with ai.similarity.

• Summarize text with ai.summarize.

• Learn more about the full set of AI functions.

• Use multimodal input with AI functions.

• Customize the configuration of AI functions.

• Did we miss a feature you need? Suggest it on the Fabric Ideas forum.