TECHNOLOGY: Skype is Launching Real-time Translated Conversations

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Technology: Skype will launch Real-time Translated Conversations

By Jorge Jefferds October 17, 2014 

Skype users will soon be able to conduct voice and video calls supported by a near-real time translation technology.

While there isn’t any guarantee that no fine detail will be lost in translation, Microsoft's new idea for its video chat platform surely feels like something straight out of science fiction.

Our hopes for such a marvel will no longer be tagged to imaginary aquatic creatures -- the Babel fish from "The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" -- or improbable "telepathic fields", such as the one cast by Doctor Who's TARDIS to relay any alien language to its pilot in pure English.

Suffice it to say people from all over the globe are going to be in our hands with an amazing universal communication strategy. The language barriers begin their extinction.

"The idea that people don't understand each other will become a thing of the past," Gurdeep Pall, Skype Corporate VP, recalled.

"In the same way it's hard to imagine a world, before you were able to travel to different places and quickly, whether in a car or a plane, where people couldn't have a normal speech. I’m talking about the Dark Ages. We’re not headed to such a place any longer."

Called Skype Translator, the add-on builds on the research done for Microsoft Translator, and uses a technology called Deep Neural Networks, which yields significantly better speech recognition results than previous methods.

It will be available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of the year, but Microsoft is already showing off its English to German functionality, as you can see in the video above.

It is still unclear whether the service will be free for the 300 million Skype users, or will be extended to other platforms.

Microsoft is not alone in its quest for a global translator. Google already offers translation by voice in its Google Translation service and is also working on integrating real-time translation into Android. And Sigmo, a Bluetooth device that promises real time speech translation in 25 languages, went through a successful crowd funding campaign last year.

If you struggle to speak with your friends, loved ones, customers, and co-workers, because of the language difference, get ready. You won’t need a dictionary or a fast idiom course anymore.