The diversity of languages across the world has always hindered seamless global communication, but Microsoft hopes to eliminate that barrier with a new artificially intelligent translator embedded into Skype.
As promised earlier this year, Microsoft debuted the preview version of Skype Translator, which allows users of the Microsoft-owned VoIP/chat application to speak to other people around the world in their own native language without the other party needing to learn it.
"Skype brings people together to make progress on what matters to them," said Skype corporate vice president Gurdeep Pall in a blog post. "Skype Translator will open up endless possibilities for people around the world to connect, communicate and collaborate; people will no longer be hindered by geography and language."
Skype Translator relies on a machine learning to deliver accurately translated voice and instant messages in "near real-time." As more people start using it, the better it will become at translating.
For now, the preview version can accommodate only English and Spanish for VoIP calls and as many as 45 languages for instant messages. Only users of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10 Technical Preview can currently gain access to Skype Translator by signing up at its website. As the Skype Translator becomes official, users will eventually be able to translate additional languages, including Mandarin, Cantonese, Arabic, Russian, German, Portuguese, Italian, French and more.
"Skype Translator is a great example of the benefit of Microsoft's investment in research," said Pall. "We've invested in speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies for more than a decade and now they're emerging as important components in this more personal computing era."
Skype's Mo Ladha and Chris Wendt said that Skype Translator uses speech recognition and automatic machine translation as a "glue" that recognizes the text to facilitate translation, while dividing the text into meaningful sentences and removing stutters such as ahs and umms.
In their own blog post, Ladha and Wendt detailed the process by which Skype Translator works. The translator engine, they said, learns different languages by reviewing a variety of sources, including "translated web pages, videos with captions, as well as previously translated and transcribed one-on-one conversations," the last of which could trigger the ire of privacy advocates as Skype Translator records private conversations for the purpose of analyzing texts and becoming better at translation.
"Skype Translator participants are all clearly notified as the call begins that their conversation will be recorded and used to improve the quality of Microsoft's translation and voice recognition services," said Ladha and Wendt.
Microsoft has also published a video showcasing how Skype Translator works. In the video, students at the Stafford Elementary School in Tacoma, Wash. are clearly awed when they speak in English to Spanish-speaking students at Peterson School in Mexico City.
