Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors

macrumors bot
Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
63,196
30,136



At today's Re/code Code Conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Skype chief Gurdeep Singh Pall demoed an real-time language translation tool) that has been built into Skype.

During the demonstration, Pall conducted a conversation with a German-speaking colleague, with Skype providing real-time translation from German to English and vice versa. According to German speaking audience members at the conference, the translation software performed "pretty good" but not perfectly.

nadellapall.jpg
Nadella and Pall demo Skype Translator at the Code Conference​
Skype Translator results from decades of work by the industry, years of work by our researchers, and now is being developed jointly by the Skype and Microsoft Translator teams. The demo showed near 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.
Microsoft hopes to use the huge number of conversations that take place on Skype to improve its translation tools with real language and speech patterns, which could lead to much better back and forth translations. Pall says the company is "working through" potential privacy issues that surround the use of customer calls.

While Microsoft plans to debut Skype Translate on the Windows platform later this year in a beta capacity, the company says that it will expand to other platforms, including OS X and iOS, shortly after the Windows version launches.
Microsoft will start with a handful of languages and only for the Windows version of Skype, though Microsoft hopes to quickly add more languages as well as support for the many types of computers and mobile devices that Skype customers use.
At launch, the Skype translator will only work with a small number of languages, those that "it can do well" but Microsoft has plans to continually add additional languages to the app as development progresses.

Update: The full video of the demo has been released by Re/code and available above.

Article Link: Microsoft Demos Skype Translation Tool Coming Later This Year [Updated]
 

lotzosushi

macrumors 6502
Jan 10, 2007
432
401
So...basically they're going to secretly record our conversations to help "improve" this translation service?


Edit: Reminds me of IBM's Watson, combining this translation tech with Cortana and Watson would be pretty crazy.
 
Last edited:

Santabean2000

macrumors 68000
Nov 20, 2007
1,881
2,002
Learning a new language will still be relevant, but man, this tech is cool. Huge possibilities in education.
 

longofest

Editor emeritus
Jul 10, 2003
2,924
1,682
Falls Church, VA
now we're getting close to a Universal Translator, though I continue to hold that you haven't heard Shakespeare until you have heard it in its original Klingon.
 

Rogifan

macrumors Penryn
Nov 14, 2011
24,069
30,944
Well played by Nadella. Less focus on his interview as everyone is talking about this. I'm still wondering what Federighi and Cue are going to talk about since they're not going to give away any WWDC stuff.
 

MacSince1990

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2009
1,347
0
Jesus. I mean, for once it's immediately very obvious how such a thing could be done, but WOW. This is SO FREAKING INSANE. And maybe a little scary.
 

stiligFox

macrumors 65816
Apr 24, 2009
1,475
1,273
10.0.1.3
*stiligFox's eyes sparkle as his Universal Translator dreams are coming true*

Knowing Skype it'll be a buggy mess, but hopefully it'll be worth it!
 

MacSince1990

macrumors 65816
Oct 6, 2009
1,347
0
Learning a new language will still be relevant, but man, this tech is cool. Huge possibilities in education.

Heh, I remember in college (okay... this was like 3 years ago lol) we had foreign partners and used Skype to talk to them in their and our languages. I'm thinking this might make that tricky XD
 

jclo

Managing Editor
Staff member
Dec 7, 2012
1,968
4,296
So...basically they're going to secretly record our conversations to help "improve" this translation service?

I'm guessing that's highly unlikely -- I'm sure it will be an opt-in type of thing if Microsoft even chooses to go in that developmental direction. No company wants to be accused of collecting unnecessary customer data on the down low after PRISM.
 

cariacou

macrumors 6502a
Jul 21, 2010
507
428
2015, the year when people don't talk face to face anymore, even when in the same building
 

danielsutton

macrumors 6502
Jun 13, 2011
385
158
[url=http://cdn.macrumors.com/im/macrumorsthreadlogodarkd.png]Image[/url]


At today's Re/code Code Conference in Ranchos Palos Verdes, California, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Skype chief Gurdeep Singh Pall demoed an real-time language translation tool) that has been built into Skype.

During the demonstration, Pall conducted a conversation with a German-speaking colleague, with Skype providing real-time translation from German to English and vice versa. According to German speaking audience members at the conference, the translation software performed "pretty good" but not perfectly.

ImageNadella and Pall demo Skype Translator at the Code Conference​
Microsoft hopes to use the huge number of conversations that take place on Skype to improve its translation tools with real language and speech patterns, which could lead to much better back and forth translations. Pall says the company is "working through" potential privacy issues that surround the use of customer calls.

While Microsoft plans to debut Skype Translate on the Windows platform later this year in a beta capacity, the company says that it will expand to other platforms, including OS X and iOS, shortly after the Windows version launches.At launch, the Skype translator will only work with a small number of languages, those that "it can do well" but Microsoft has plans to continually add additional languages to the app as development progresses.

Article Link: Microsoft Demos Skype Translation Tool Coming Later This Year

Apple should similarly develop FaceTime, and release it with translation functionality.
 

Casiotone

macrumors 6502a
Oct 12, 2008
825
111
Many years ago I wrote an AppleScript for the ircle IRC client that queried Google Translate in the background and enabled "live" translation of private IRC conversation (it wasn't fast enough to deal with the whole channel feed.)

Had some fun with it chatting with people from all over the world, though Google Translate was very bad back in the days, which lead to funny results! :)
 

joekun

macrumors regular
Mar 10, 2005
195
29
If this is as bad as the Bing translations they provide for Facebook forget it. Those have literally provided heinous and erroneous things to be added to my wife's timeline that you can't remove without deleting a perfectly legitimate post. If someone chooses to click that translate button they can get a very wrong idea and there is nothing you can do.
 

Imaginator

macrumors regular
Apr 4, 2014
131
7
The Cosmos
The pendulum swings. Microsoft has done more progressive soul searching and innovation in the last 6 months than Apple has in the last 6 years.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.