Skype Translator will Allow Users to Chat in Real-Time with People in Other Languages Later This Year – A Star Trek Like Universal Communicator for Skype Users

At Code Conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and his team discussed the companies next big thing on evolving a more personal, more human era of computing. Microsoft is all set to add an exciting new capability for Skype – Skype Translator – that turns your real-time conversation into a Star Trek like universal communicator to chat in other languages. With it, you can talk in your native language to another user who speaks a different language on Skype. In an on-stage demo, Satya Nadella showed off Skype Translator, an upcoming version of the service that is capable of translating voice conversation in real-time.

Skype translator is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The Skype translator service adds the other person’s translations for you in subtitle format at the bottom of the screen. You have to wait until the other person is done speaking before the service starts translating the conversation. In a demo, the Microsoft team showed a real-time audio translation from English to German and vice-versa, combining Skype voice and IM technologies with Microsoft Translator, and neural network-based speech recognition.

Skype Translator first will be available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of 2014. The beta service is due out by the end of the year, and will be on all devices that run Skype. The company didn’t say any  specific language support yet for the Skype translator service.

Today, Skype has more than 300 million connected users each month, and more than 2 billion minutes of conversation a day by delivering voice and video across a number of devices, from PCs and tablets, to smartphones and TVs. Now, Microsoft is looking beyond the language barriers and the Skype Translator will help you to overcome this barrier.

Source: Microsoft