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Skype Unveils Preview of Live English-To-Spanish Translator

Posted by timothy on from the stick-this-in-your-ear dept.

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.

2 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Was cool in 2010 when foss BigBlueButton did this by raymorris · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  2. With Skype NSA pre-encryption access coded in by sasparillascott · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Always good to keep in mind with Skype, courtesy of Edward Snowden, Microsoft, as a partner to the NSA, rewrote it and coded in pre-encryption access for the NSA for all Skype communications (video, audio and text). Microsoft has never said it has taken them out. So always assume that whatever you do on Skype is getting recorded and kept, for future use, by the NSA or one of the other five eyes agencies.

    http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

    As others have pointed out, last week the U.S. passed a law (and the President signed it), which got no press, authorizing all U.S. citizen communications can be recorded without a warrant and that information can be passed from the NSA (which was created only to spy on external threats...not anymore), kept for as long as the NSA would want and passed directly to law enforcement agencies when they want it. Its not that President Obama won't do anything with your skype communications, its what the future Nixon, McCarthy or (FBI) Hoover, or worse, will do with them.

    https://www.techdirt.com/artic...