He started translating when he was studying in college. He translated John Morley's "On Compromise" in Gujarati and won a thousand rupees prize of the Farbas Gujarati Sabha. Later it was published as "Satyagrahni Maryada". From Bengali, he translated Saratchandra Chattopadhyaya's short stories as "Tran Vartao" (1923) and the novella "Virajvahu" (1924). He also translated Tagore's works into Gujarati such as "Prachin Sahitya" (1922), "Chitrangada" and "Viday Abhishap" (1925). He translated Nehru's "Autobiography" as "Mari Jeevanktha" (1936) into Gujarati from English. The English translation of Gandhi's autobiography, "The Story of My Experiments with Truth", from its Gujarati original was also done by Desai.