Microsoft adds Russian for simultaneous interpreting in Skype calls

Now the function of simultaneous translation of calls and instant messages in real-time Skype Translator supports Russian language. Service simultaneously translates the dialogue of the opponent in audio and text format — user can hear the voice of the robot and sees a running line.

Russian became the ninth language, available for simultaneous translation, after English, Spanish, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian, French, Portuguese (Brazilian), German, and Arabic (when messages are translations available in over 50 languages).

To get a new function, the user must find and choose Russian language from the menu Skype Translator in the dialog of the conversation. For owners of devices based on Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the new product will be available automatically.

Transfer to be announced device — the user can choose in the settings male or female voice, and is also shown in the form of credits in the transcript of the conversation. The result will be better if they both activate Skype Translator. To install the service and to the simultaneous translation you can also on smartphones and tablets running iOS or Android.

The basis of Skype Translator is the technology of machine learning. This means that a service is being improved as you use, the more people will use it for communication, the higher the quality of the translation.

Head of developer innovation linguistic technologies and solutions, ABBYY Language Solutions Anton Voronov called automatic simultaneous translation during a video call “an old dream of mankind”. “From a technological point of view, it is quite challenging and interesting task. You need to recognize it. Then use a machine translation engine to translate the recognized text.

Finally, voice is the easiest step”, — said Anton Voronov. The most difficult, according to him, the conjunction of speech recognition and machine translation, which is very sensitive to the quality of the source material. For example, the speech translation spoken format and slang are unlikely to be of high quality.

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