Google translate language codes

gistfile1.txt

Eg. URL translating en page to es
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=en&tl=es&u=http://about.com

Define the web interface language to be English by adding
hl=en to the end of the URL and after the change the URL will look
like this:

   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en

When you use more than one setting code in the URL, you need to use
the & character between them. For example, if you also want to define
the search language to be English you need to use the & character
between the codes like this:

   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en

Because the above URL probably won't work so that the selected search
language will be used if you try do a search on that page, you also
need to add a search query (q=) to the URL, so the resulting URL will
be:

   http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=lang_en&q=example

Remember to press Enter (or equivalent key) on your keyboard after
adding the needed characters.

Web Interface Language Codes

hl=af          Afrikaans
hl=ak          Akan
hl=sq          Albanian
hl=am          Amharic
hl=ar          Arabic
hl=hy          Armenian
hl=az          Azerbaijani
hl=eu          Basque
hl=be          Belarusian
hl=bem         Bemba
hl=bn          Bengali
hl=bh          Bihari
hl=xx-bork     Bork, bork, bork!
hl=bs          Bosnian
hl=br          Breton
hl=bg          Bulgarian
hl=km          Cambodian
hl=ca          Catalan
hl=chr         Cherokee
hl=ny          Chichewa
hl=zh-CN       Chinese (Simplified)
hl=zh-TW       Chinese (Traditional)
hl=co          Corsican
hl=hr          Croatian
hl=cs          Czech
hl=da          Danish
hl=nl          Dutch
hl=xx-elmer    Elmer Fudd
hl=en          English
hl=eo          Esperanto
hl=et          Estonian
hl=ee          Ewe
hl=fo          Faroese
hl=tl          Filipino
hl=fi          Finnish
hl=fr          French
hl=fy          Frisian
hl=gaa         Ga
hl=gl          Galician
hl=ka          Georgian
hl=de          German
hl=el          Greek
hl=gn          Guarani
hl=gu          Gujarati
hl=xx-hacker   Hacker
hl=ht          Haitian Creole
hl=ha          Hausa
hl=haw         Hawaiian
hl=iw          Hebrew
hl=hi          Hindi
hl=hu          Hungarian
hl=is          Icelandic
hl=ig          Igbo
hl=id          Indonesian
hl=ia          Interlingua
hl=ga          Irish
hl=it          Italian
hl=ja          Japanese
hl=jw          Javanese
hl=kn          Kannada
hl=kk          Kazakh
hl=rw          Kinyarwanda
hl=rn          Kirundi
hl=xx-klingon  Klingon
hl=kg          Kongo
hl=ko          Korean
hl=kri         Krio (Sierra Leone)
hl=ku          Kurdish
hl=ckb         Kurdish (Soranî)
hl=ky          Kyrgyz
hl=lo          Laothian
hl=la          Latin
hl=lv          Latvian
hl=ln          Lingala
hl=lt          Lithuanian
hl=loz         Lozi
hl=lg          Luganda
hl=ach         Luo
hl=mk          Macedonian
hl=mg          Malagasy
hl=ms          Malay
hl=ml          Malayalam
hl=mt          Maltese
hl=mi          Maori
hl=mr          Marathi
hl=mfe         Mauritian Creole
hl=mo          Moldavian
hl=mn          Mongolian
hl=sr-ME       Montenegrin
hl=ne          Nepali
hl=pcm         Nigerian Pidgin
hl=nso         Northern Sotho
hl=no          Norwegian
hl=nn          Norwegian (Nynorsk)
hl=oc          Occitan
hl=or          Oriya
hl=om          Oromo
hl=ps          Pashto
hl=fa          Persian
hl=xx-pirate   Pirate
hl=pl          Polish
hl=pt-BR       Portuguese (Brazil)
hl=pt-PT       Portuguese (Portugal)
hl=pa          Punjabi
hl=qu          Quechua
hl=ro          Romanian
hl=rm          Romansh
hl=nyn         Runyakitara
hl=ru          Russian
hl=gd          Scots Gaelic
hl=sr          Serbian
hl=sh          Serbo-Croatian
hl=st          Sesotho
hl=tn          Setswana
hl=crs         Seychellois Creole
hl=sn          Shona
hl=sd          Sindhi
hl=si          Sinhalese
hl=sk          Slovak
hl=sl          Slovenian
hl=so          Somali
hl=es          Spanish
hl=es-419      Spanish (Latin American)
hl=su          Sundanese
hl=sw          Swahili
hl=sv          Swedish
hl=tg          Tajik
hl=ta          Tamil
hl=tt          Tatar
hl=te          Telugu
hl=th          Thai
hl=ti          Tigrinya
hl=to          Tonga
hl=lua         Tshiluba
hl=tum         Tumbuka
hl=tr          Turkish
hl=tk          Turkmen
hl=tw          Twi
hl=ug          Uighur
hl=uk          Ukrainian
hl=ur          Urdu
hl=uz          Uzbek
hl=vi          Vietnamese
hl=cy          Welsh
hl=wo          Wolof
hl=xh          Xhosa
hl=yi          Yiddish
hl=yo          Yoruba
hl=zu          Zulu



Search Language Codes

lr=lang_af    Afrikaans
lr=lang_ar    Arabic
lr=lang_hy    Armenian
lr=lang_be    Belarusian
lr=lang_bg    Bulgarian
lr=lang_ca    Catalan
lr=lang_zh-CN Chinese (Simplified)
lr=lang_zh-TW Chinese (Traditional)
lr=lang_hr    Croatian
lr=lang_cs    Czech
lr=lang_da    Danish
lr=lang_nl    Dutch
lr=lang_en    English
lr=lang_eo    Esperanto
lr=lang_et    Estonian
lr=lang_tl    Filipino
lr=lang_fi    Finnish
lr=lang_fr    French
lr=lang_de    German
lr=lang_el    Greek
lr=lang_iw    Hebrew
lr=lang_hi    Hindi
lr=lang_hu    Hungarian
lr=lang_is    Icelandic
lr=lang_id    Indonesian
lr=lang_it    Italian
lr=lang_ja    Japanese
lr=lang_ko    Korean
lr=lang_lv    Latvian
lr=lang_lt    Lithuanian
lr=lang_no    Norwegian
lr=lang_fa    Persian
lr=lang_pl    Polish
lr=lang_pt    Portuguese
lr=lang_ro    Romanian
lr=lang_ru    Russian
lr=lang_sr    Serbian
lr=lang_sk    Slovak
lr=lang_sl    Slovenian
lr=lang_es    Spanish
lr=lang_sw    Swahili
lr=lang_sv    Swedish
lr=lang_th    Thai
lr=lang_tr    Turkish
lr=lang_uk    Ukrainian
lr=lang_vi    Vietnamese


Short Textual List of Only the Language Codes

af, ach, ak, am, ar, az, be, bem, bg, bh, bn, br, bs, ca, chr, ckb, 
co, crs, cs, cy, da, de, ee, el, en, eo, es, es-419, et, eu, fa, fi, 
fo, fr, fy, ga, gaa, gd, gl, gn, gu, ha, haw, hi, hr, ht, hu, hy, ia, 
id, ig, is, it, iw, ja, jw, ka, kg, kk, km, kn, ko, kri, ku, ky, la, 
lg, ln, lo, loz, lt, lua, lv, mfe, mg, mi, mk, ml, mn, mo, mr, ms, mt,
ne, nl, nn, no, nso, ny, nyn, oc, om, or, pa, pcm, pl, ps, pt-BR, 
pt-PT, qu, rm, rn, ro, ru, rw, sd, sh, si, sk, sl, sn, so, sq, sr, 
sr-ME, st, su, sv, sw, ta, te, tg, th, ti, tk, tl, tn, to, tr, tt, 
tum, tw, ug, uk, ur, uz, vi, wo, xh, xx-bork, xx-elmer, xx-hacker, 
xx-klingon, xx-pirate, yi, yo, zh-CN, zh-TW, zu.


Links

Related Pages

Google Translate
Google Transliteration
Google in Your Language
Google Translator Toolkit
Google Translate Blog


News

Google search now supports Cherokee (March 2011)
Listen to us now! (December 2010)
On-screen Keyboards on Google Translate (December 2010)
Google Launches Cantonese Voice Search in Hong Kong (December 2010)
Transliteration goes global (December 2009)
51 Languages in Google Translate (August 2009)

Fork of the following work:


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Copyright (C) 2007—2012: Tomi Häsä (tomi.hasa@gmail.com).

 
Disclaimer: This article is provided as is without any express or
implied warranties. While every effort has been taken to ensure the
accuracy of the information contained in this article, the
contributor assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for
damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

Are there any more machine readable versions of this?

You are missing:
'ceb' Cebuano, 'hmn' Hmong, 'lb' Luxembourgish, 'sm' Samoan

I'd like to suggest edits to the codes. Some of the Balkans codes in the file no longer exist. Here's a brief interaction I had with Google Gemini while trying to figure out why the SH designation for Serbo-Croation yields an ERROR.
Google Language Codes (for translations)

I'm using this Google language code to translate English words to Serbo-Croation =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2, "en", "sh"), per the language codes listed here: https://gist.github.com/JT5D/a2fdfefa80124a06f5a9 But I'm getting an ERROR message in the column with my translation formula. Am I wrong in using SH as the translation code for Serbo-Croation?

Yes, you are encountering an error because Google Translate no longer supports the umbrella code "sh" for Serbo-Croatian. While "sh" was the historical ISO 639-1 code for Serbo-Croatian, it has been officially deprecated in many modern IT systems, including Google's API, in favor of specific national languages.
To fix the error in your spreadsheet, you must use the specific code for the dialect or nation you are targeting.

Correct Language Codes for the Region

You should replace "sh" with one of the following active codes:
• Serbian: sr
• Croatian: hr
• Bosnian: bs

If you want the most common translation for that region, your formula should look like this:

=GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2, "en", "sr") (for Serbian) OR =GOOGLETRANSLATE(A2, "en", "hr") (for Croatian)

Why "sh" is Failing

The code "sh" was used when Serbo-Croatian was treated as a single unified language. Following the dissolution of Yugoslavia, the language was officially split into Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Montenegrin. Google Translate transitioned its database to reflect these distinct standards to ensure accuracy in grammar, vocabulary, and alphabet (Serbian often uses Cyrillic, while Croatian uses Latin).

Technical Definitions

•	ISO 639-1: A standardized nomenclature used to classify languages with two-letter codes. "sh" is considered a "deprecated" code within this system for most modern applications.
•	Deprecated: In computing, this refers to a feature or code that is still available but is being phased out and should no longer be used because it may not work correctly.
•	Cyrillic vs. Latin Alphabets: Serbian (sr) can be written in either script, but Google Translate defaults to Cyrillic for "sr" unless specified otherwise. Croatian (hr) and Bosnian (bs) exclusively use the Latin alphabet.

Citations
"GoogleTranslate Function List." Google Docs Editors Help, 2026. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/3093331. Verified active Jan 2026.
"ISO 639-1 Language Codes." International Organization for Standardization, 2026. https://www.iso.org/iso-639-language-codes.html. Verified active Jan 2026.
"Serbo-Croatian Language Classification." Ethnologue, 2026. https://www.ethnologue.com/language/hbs/. Verified active Jan 2026.