Skype Translator Solves a Universal Problem

Skype Group Video Call

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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Skype to Break Language Barriers with ‘Skype Translator’

Skype translatorNeed to have a Skype video conference with someone overseas that doesn’t speak your language? In the near future this will be no problem because Skype has come up with Skype Translator, as it is being called for now.

The technology was demonstrated at the Recode Code Conference in California on Tuesday night. In the demonstration the two people on the Skype video call spoke different languages, one German speaking and the other English speaking. As we don’t know German very well here, the translator technology appeared work excellent. The conversation they had was not a simple one either. They discussed their plans to move to London and went into details about sight-seeing, moving with kids and different neighborhoods.

Each person takes their turn to speak and then there’s a short pause while Skype Translator translates what was said. It would send it back as text as well as spoken with an automated voice.

Microsoft, which purchased Skype back in 2011, has been working on the translation program for over 15 years. They think it will be available at the end of this year as a Windows 8 beta app. We will keep you posted.

via CNN

Microsoft Demos Real-time Language Translator for Skype


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