Skype Brings Real-Time Translator Online

 Machine Learning  

Skype Translator gives you the ability to speak another language without learning one. Simply set up a Skype video or voice call with someone who speaks another language and start talking. Translator is currently available in English and Spanish. More languages are coming soon.

After years of development, if Microsoft's Skype Translator lives up to the hype, this could be one of the most powerful communication technologies ever created.

The company recently previewed Skype Translator to two elementary school classes—one in Washington and one in Mexico City. A few rounds of “Mystery Classroom” was all it took for these students to discover the potential of translator to break down language barriers and bring people together.

The Skype Translator project offers near real-time translation of both spoken and written languages for participants in Skype conversations, making it possible for two people who speak completely different languages to talk with each other with virtually no barriers to understanding. The preview program starts with support for English and Spanish spoken translation, as well as over 40 languages for real-time text chat.

As of now, the translator is limited to users of Windows 8.1 software.

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With Skype Translator,  Microsoft invested in speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies for more than a decade, to develop this tool, and according to the company, Skype Translator is only "the most recent and visible example."

"This is just the beginning of a journey that will transform the way we communicate with people around the world. Our long-term goal for speech translation is to translate as many languages as possible on as many platforms as possible and deliver the best Skype Translator experience on each individual platform for our more than 300 million connected users."

By using machine learning, Skype Translator will get 'smarter' that the more it is used. By learning from the training data during this preview stage, along with all of its nuances, the software can learn to better recognize and translate the diversity of topics, accents and language variation of actual Skype Translator users.

According to Microsoft, "This is just the beginning of a journey that will transform the way we communicate with people around the world. Our long-term goal for speech translation is to translate as many languages as possible on as many platforms as possible and deliver the best Skype Translator experience on each individual platform for our more than 300 million connected users."

So far, the early tests look promising, and it will be interesting to see how it performs in real-world situations with more complex dialog.




SOURCE  Tech Crunch

By 33rd Square

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