Microsoft demos real-time language translation for Skype

[Himanshu Arora]

Remember the iconic Universal Translator from Star Trek? Microsoft announced yesterday that it is planning to roll out a similar language translation feature for Skype by the end of the year.

Dubbed Skype Translator, the feature would allow people who don’t speak the same language to talk with each other, while Skype handles translation in real time.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella demonstrated the feature during an onstage interview at the Recode Code Conference in Palos Verdes, California. He conducted a conversation with Gurdeep Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype and Lync at Microsoft, who was speaking German.

Pall said in a follow-up post that the company has been working on the technology for more than a decade now. "It is early days for this technology, but the Star Trek vision for a Universal Translator isn’t a galaxy away, and its potential is every bit as exciting as those Star Trek examples", he added.

Skype Translator, which is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams, will be first available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of 2014. The feature currently supports about 40 languages.

Skype boasts more than 300 million active users each month, who spend more than 2 billion minutes of conversation a day. Nadella said that the company's eventual goal is to launch the language translation feature on as many devices as possible.

Microsoft is not the only player in real-time language translation space. Japanese wireless carrier NTT Docomo has been offering a Japanese to English real-time language translator since 2011. Google has also been working on a similar technology for its voice chats.

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[Guest]

Sometimes people who speak the same language misinterpret what was said.
I foresee misunderstandings galore with this.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

Tell me about it. Reading posts by some guests you'd swear they're talking sh!t but upon closer inspection it's actually English. A translator could come in handy here.

 

[VitalyT]

The most common spoken language in the world - broken English, what else is there to say... try and translate it

 

[Jad Chaar]

This is quite cool.

 

[wastedkill]

This is cool buy why skype... if they could integrate this into their phones I would admit it would be an instant by and not just from me but by a massive margin in the phone market share! People would love to talk to their friends all over the world in their native language and this is one way to do it.

No more paying for translators just buy a microsoft phone which has live call translation on governments, citizens, companies etc. would love this product its such a big thing if it was real!

 

[HellcatM]

This is cool buy why skype... if they could integrate this into their phones I would admit it would be an instant by and not just from me but by a massive margin in the phone market share! People would love to talk to their friends all over the world in their native language and this is one way to do it.

No more paying for translators just buy a microsoft phone which has live call translation on governments, citizens, companies etc. would love this product its such a big thing if it was real!

I agree, put it in Windows period, weather its phone or RT or Windows 8. It would be cool if they could make it so you could just hold your phone out and have a conversation with someone thats in the same room as you. Go to another country and ask a question and get an answer even though you speak different languages. Putting it in Skype I think would be difficult to do this.

 

[wiyosaya]

As I see it, skype will be a test bed for this, and perhaps there is a large amount of realtime data that this app has to look at while translating - which, to me, seems like skype would be a better location to more easily collect that data. As an app for Windows Phone or RT, it might need an internet connection.

IMHO, it will be interesting to see where this goes on the future.

 

[Guest]

But when are they going to have a translate that I can use to translate what the people at my favorite Chinese restaurant are saying about me.