Skype Unveils Preview of Live English-To-Spanish Translator

mpicpp writes that Microsoft, after demoing the technology back in May, is giving some real-world exposure to its Skype-based translation. The Skype preview program will kick-off with two spoken languages, Spanish and English, and 40+ instant messaging languages will be available to Skype customers who have signed-up via the Skype Translator sign-up page and are using Windows 8.1 on the desktop or device. Skype asked two schools to try Skype Translator – Peterson School in Mexico City, and Stafford Elementary School in Tacoma, USA – playing a game of 'Mystery Skype' in which the children ask questions to determine the location of the other school. One classroom of children speaking Spanish and the other speaking English, Skype Translator removed this language barrier and enabled them to communicate.

Comments

Re:Was cool in 2010 when foss BigBlueButton did th

[OzPeter]

I, and my customer, thought it was cool as heck when the open source video conferencing system Big Blue Button added auto-translate back in 2010. It's good to see Microsoft catching on too.

Except that this is not translation of chat messages, but live translation of spoken word coupled with voice synthesis in the translated language.

You can't tell from the video how "real-time" it is, but it seems fast enough for a basic conversation. Also there is nothing I saw that indicates how much training the speech recognition needs.