Oh wow!
Microsoft has just demoed an amazing new feature for Skype that will actually allow you to speak to people in other languages — in real-time — by doing all the translating work for you!
Gurdeep Pall, Skype Chief, teased the new feature at Re/code’s Code Conference by calling up a German-speaking exec to display the new translation chops. According to a few German-speaking members in the audience, the translation was rather good but not perfect.
When in use, the new feature shows a translation of the other person’s words at the bottom of your screen. It’s not instant though, you will have to wait until the other person finishes before you can see what they are saying. Nonetheless, it is an impressive start. Plus, it hopes to improve at providing accurate, near-instant translations when more users make use of the new feature.
Microsoft has plans to start with just a number of languages and it will only work on computes running Windows. Although, support for other languages and other computes will obviously come later on. As for the initial stages of beta round, you should expect it to be hitting PCs sometime later this year.
Check out the new feature here:
