Translation Tools for Educators: What I Tested and Still Use in My Elementary Classroom
Yesterday morning I was passing out fraction worksheets when Maria, my new 4th grade student from Bogotá, raised her hand halfway down the row. She tapped the phrase “equivalent fraction” on the paper and looked up at me, brow raised. Three years ago, I would’ve fumbled for my phone, squinted at the tiny camera translation, and hoped I didn’t mangle the term in my rough intermediate Spanish. Today, I just tap a button on my classroom projector, pull up the worksheet’s translated copy, and point to her desk where her printed side-by-side English and Spanish copy is already waiting.
When our small urban elementary school started seeing a steady increase in new multilingual learners three years ago, we didn’t get much extra support. Most of us classroom teachers only spoke English and a little high school Spanish, and we were told to figure out how to include kids who weren’t fluent in English yet alongside everyone else. I spent three weekends testing every free and low-cost translation tool I could find, because I didn’t want any kid sitting in my class lost just because they hadn’t learned all the English words yet.
First, I started with the obvious one: Google Translate. It’s still my go-to for quick, informal moments. If a student taps their stomach and says “hurt,” I can pull it up fast to confirm if they need the nurse, or if they’re just hungry for snack. It works great for simple back-and-forth when a kid needs to tell me something personal, and the camera feature works fine for quick word checks when they’re reading a chapter book. But for academic vocabulary? It’s hit or miss, and more often miss. I once had it translate “remainder” in long division to “the leftover part of a dead body,” which led to a very confused, slightly upset classroom conversation. It also struggles a lot with tone when I write notes to parents. Once I sent a note saying “I’ve noticed your child gets tired during afternoon lessons” and Google translated it to “Your child is lazy in the afternoon,” which caused a lot of unnecessary stress.
Next I tried DeepL, which I first heard about from a fellow teacher on a Facebook group for elementary educators. It’s way more accurate for longer text and academic terms, and it gets tone right more often than not. I still use DeepL for all parent communication now. If I’m writing a longer note about a conference or a classroom event, I write it in English, copy it into DeepL, translate it to the family’s home language, and paste it into my message. It’s never made that tone mistake Google did, and it’s still free for the amount of use I need it for. For translating whole worksheets, I actually just use the built-in translation tool in Google Docs now, but if that gives me a wonky term, I double check it with DeepL in 10 seconds. The trick I use that works for kids is printing the translated worksheet side-by-side with the English one, so they can match words they know and build their English vocabulary while still following the content. Most parents I know do this same trick for homework with their kids at home, too.
For whole class lessons when I have multiple multilingual learners who speak different home languages, I use Microsoft Translator’s live caption feature. It translates what I’m saying in real time to any language, and displays the text on students’ iPads or my projector. I used this last semester when I had three new students from Guatemala, Syria, and Vietnam all join my class within the same week. It translated my lecture on plant life cycles into all three languages at once, so every kid could follow along. It’s not perfect—if the room is noisy or I talk too fast, the captions get mixed up. I just slow down my speaking a little, which actually helps all my students, not just the multilingual ones, so it’s a win.
I did try that fancy paid translation tool the district sales rep pitched a couple years ago, it cost $300 a year per teacher and had all these extra features I never used. It ended up being less accurate than the free tools I already had, so I let my trial expire and never went back.
A lot of other teachers and parents ask me if using translation tools keeps kids from learning English. I wondered that at first, too. But what I’ve seen is the opposite. If a kid can’t understand what’s being taught, they just shut down and don’t participate. If they have translation to follow along, they can join group work, answer questions, and practice English in low-pressure ways. Maria volunteered to present her science project in front of the whole class last week, just two months after she moved here. She wouldn’t have done that if she’d spent the last two months sitting confused every day.
I’m still testing new tools, and I still have bad days. Last week the Wi-Fi went out mid-lesson and all my translation tools stopped working, so I had to improvise with drawings and my bad Spanish to get through the math period. It’s not a perfect solution, and I still wish we had more full-time ESL support for our kids. But right now, these tools work well enough to keep kids included, and that’s what matters most.
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