By Ryan Lawler (@ryanlawler)
Microsoft’s
Skype has long enabled people in different parts of the world to
communicate with one another through video, voice, and text chat. Now
the service is looking to expand those capabilities by testing out a
feature that could allow people who don’t speak the same language to
talk with each other.
Today at the first annual CODE Conference, Microsoft head of Skype and Lync Gurdeep Singh Pall
showed off a new speech-to-speech translation technology that the
company is looking to introduce in future versions of its Skype
products. The feature, which Skype is hoping to roll out in beta later
this year, translates speech from one language to another in near
real-time.
As it was demoed, the feature translated Pall’s speech from English
into text for transcription on a colleague’s screen in German, and also
into voice in German… and vice versa.
In a chat before the demo, Pall said “Skype is about bringing people
closer, and breaking down barriers.” That started with the idea of cheap
international calling and expanded into face-to-face communications via
video. Now it’s taking on the challenge of breaking the language
barrier.
The feature was a collaboration between Skype, Bing, Microsoft’s
Research Lab, which has long been working on natural language processing
and machine learning for a while. Language recognition is powered by
the same technology as Microsoft’s Cortana personal assistant on Windows 8.1.
At the conference, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that the feature
would be avialable later this year, and that the company would try to
launch it on as many devices and apps as possible.
Source:http://techcrunch.com
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