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

Was cool in 2010 when foss BigBlueButton did this

[raymorris]

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.

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.

With Skype NSA pre-encryption access coded in

[sasparillascott]

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...

Re:Yeah right.

[JayJay.br]

Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all

Re:Doubts about performance

[ArcadeMan]

Compte tenu de merde comment est le sous-titrage automatique fermé où vous voyez (TV, Youtube, etc.) en anglais où se fait la plupart des travaux et des recherches originales. Maintenant imaginez vous alors dois traduire cela en une autre langue où l'exercice de traduction est faible ou oui, donc. Maintenant, il s'agit d'ony moitié de l'équation, vous devez ensuite convertir une langue étrangère parlée en texte, puis le traduire en anglais. J'ai des réserves sur les performances d'un tel système, étant donné les performances de toutes les composantes individuelles nécessaires pour que cela devienne une réalité.

That's from Bing Translate. The first few sentences are really hard to comprehend but the last one is, for lack of a better word, perfect.

Multipass.

Newfanese

[slackoon]

If you're from Canada you'll understand when I say

Let's see it handle Newfaneese!!!!
examples here
“Who knit ya?”
Translation: Who’s your mother/parents?
This one doesn’t need too much explanation, but try telling your mother that all she was doing for nine months was “knitting.”
“I’m gutfounded. Fire up a scoff.”
translation "I'm hungry, make some food" Translation: I’m hungry. Make me some food.

Re:Yeah right.

[fnj]

So you say "Your mother's red dress looks very nice today"
And it says (in Spanish) "Your mother's red underwear looks very stained today"

Hey, 75% of the words are right.