After letting us speak to people all over the world for years, Skype Translator now lets us understand our international friends and family too.

For years, Skype has allowed us to communicate with friends, family and coworkers from across the world using the power of the Internet. Have a loved one who’s emigrated? Skype them. Putting together a deal with an international business client? Skype them!

With video chatting, instant messaging and voice-only calls, Skype has been most people’s go to service for talking over the web. It even allows you to call actual phonelines (for a fee), making it a pretty good replacement for your landline too.

But what about the people you can’t understand? Previously, even if both you and the other caller were on Skype and speaking in different languages, you would still need a translator to be present. Thankfully though, Skype Translator has just been announced, making international communication a doddle.

As demonstrated in the above featurette, Skype Translator translates your conversation in real time. If someone says something to you in another language then it’ll be transmitted to you in your language and when you reply, the same happens for the recipient. Skype Translator even provides an on-screen transcript of your call, which is especially handy for keeping track of what’s been said.

Currently, the Skype Translator feature for voice calls is only available in Spanish to English (and vice versa). Those who prefer to use instant messaging get a slightly better deal as IMs are translated (again, in real time) for over 40 different languages. It’s unclear what the full list of 40 is but the Skype Translator sign up page offers options of Arabic, Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Italian, Korean, Russian, English, German, Japanese, Portuguese and Spanish which covers most bases.

The preview of Skype Translator will be released soon, with a full roll out planned sometime afterwards. Check the source link below to find out how to gain access.

Source: Skype

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