Microsoft's Real-Time Skype Translator Available For Windows 8.1 And Windows 10 Technical Preview Users

Microsoft released the first public preview of real-time Skype translator, kicking off with two spoken languages, Spanish and English. The service provides real-time translation for voice calls and online chats. 

"We've invested in speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies for more than a decade, and now they're emerging as important components in this more personal computing era," Microsoft corporate VP Gurdeep Pall wrote in a blog post.

As of now, the service is available for those who signed up for the preview program. It is supporting 40 instant messaging languages and two spoken ones.

The company said it is sticking with two languages for now in order to give the machine learning algorithms. In days to come, Skype will be able to auto-translate "as many languages as possible."

Using Skype Translator is easy. Those who already got a preview can talk in Spanish/English, where each speaker will receive both a written and an auditory translation. Although it takes a moment for translations to occur, testers say it hits a pretty high accuracy level. 

The Skype team added that the service will become smarter as more and more people use it. "Our machine learning models account for these pauses," the Skype team explained. "In the preview you will see how some of these fillers are removed, and how some are not - we hope to improve our capabilities through user feedback."

"While this moment is a major milestone for our team, we see the preview as simply another step in creating the best translation experience we possibly can," stated Skype.