MICROSOFT has announced what it calls “a breakthrough” in real-time voice translation and says it will offer a test version through Skype by the end of the year.
The tech giant demonstrated the new Skype Translator at the Code Conference, saying it fulfils a vision of the “universal translator” in the Star Trek science fiction series.
“The Star Trek vision for a universal translator isn’t a galaxy away, and its potential is every bit as exciting as those Star Trek examples,” said a blog post from Gurdeep Pall, vice president of Skype and Lync at Microsoft.
“Skype Translator opens up so many possibilities to make meaningful connections in ways you never could before in education, diplomacy, multilingual families and in business.”
The product, the result of years of research at Microsoft, will be available as a Windows 8 beta app before the end of 2014, Mr Pall said.
At the California conference, the team demonstrated near-simultaneous translation between English and German.
Full article: Microsoft unveils Skype Translator service it compares to Star Trek’s ‘universal translator’ (Herald Sun)
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