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Skype will translate meetings live

By Lawlinguists In Translation services, translator

Skype Business meeting broadcast is innovative in that it allows a small number of speakers to broadcast a presentation to up to 10,000 viewers. This feature can be beneficial for webinars, company meetings and other large occasions. But, what if you don’t speak the same language as the presenters?

 

As of now, viewers can only hear the presentation in the language the speaker is using. Therefore, this lack of a translator has limited the variety of people who could be listening in on any given presentation. However, thanks to a new development from Microsoft (News – Alert) this problem will be taken care of.

 

Later this year, Skype for Business will see the launch of a new beta feature that will offer live captioning during meeting broadcasts. This live captioning feature will be available in an impressive 40 different languages. This new facet of the program will be powered by Bing’s Translator technology.

 

How will it work?

So, how exactly will it work? Speakers will be able to talk in one of the supported native languages, and then their viewers will be able to see a computer-generated text translation of what’s being said.

 

This new development is a vast improvement to a system that, previously, had no translation option for meeting broadcasts.

 

Aside from international audiences, this feature will also be beneficial to hearing-impaired users. They too will now be able to see live captions from feeds that are sent over Skype Meeting Broadcast.

 

Microsoft hasn’t set an official release date for the feature, and the company hasn’t yet said which input languages are available. The back end of the system is powered by Bing Translator, which can handle voice input in seven different languages, but they may not all be supported by Skype for Business when the translation feature launches.