Articles and Stories

December 16, 2014

In the past 10 years, we have come a long way in our abilities to find effective tools of communication to help diminish time constrains, particularly when it involves different locations around the globe. In these 10 years, we have seen all sorts of e-learning programs and web conference systems get more and more sophisticated to help cross borders and allow loads of material and information to be transferred cohesively across cultures and individuals of different nationalities.

One company that has been investing these 10 years in evolving in this direction is Skype. We all remember how it was mostly an internet chat program that eventually allowed phone calls from computers to cell phones as well as web-conferencing. For a company so widely known in all continents, there was yet one last milestone, and it seems they have finally achieved it.

If you are global, and your main focus is communication, it only makes sense you would invest in some form of translation tool, and apparently Skype has taken this sentiment to heart. Skype released its Translator Preview for Skype’s Windows app on Monday. The software translates spoken audio and uses speech recognition, speech-to-text and a machine voice to perform live translations while on a conference call. This allows communication back and forth between speakers of different languages.

Currently, the live audio (and speech-to-text) system is only supported in Spanish and English, however more languages are planned to be added. Even with the current language pair limitation, you can still benefit from using their translation capabilities in 40 different languages supported in the text chat portion of Skype. If you are curious, you can check the preview on Skype’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G87pHe6mP0I&feature=youtu.be

While we have yet to see how accurate the translations might be, there is no denying this is a step in the right direction and will be a great tool for global companies and for educators alike.