Skype translator is now available to everyone with the latest versions of Windows

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    A preview version of Skype Translator has appeared in the Windows Store app store - an application that allows you to translate voice calls in real time. So far, translation between 4 languages ​​is supported: English, Spanish, Italian and Chinese. Many more languages (50+) can be used to translate instant messages, including Russian and Ukrainian. So far, only owners of Windows 8.1 or Windows 10 Technical Preview can try how it works.

    In addition to major versions of Windows, Microsoft plans to release versions of Skype Translator for other platforms, including Linux. In addition, Redmond promises to make it possible to translate "from all possible languages." Microsoft illustrates the future of Internet communication with such a video (the Pro Mujer organization, which is described in the video, was one of the Skype Translator testers):



    The Microsoft Research team began developing automated translation of voice and text back in 2005. Crick Kirk, Arul Menezes and University of Alberta Colin Cherry were responsible for her appearance. They developed a translation engine that takes into account the syntactic and statistical characteristics of languages. Until 2009, the engine was based on algorithms based on Gaussian mixtures, which turned out to be inefficient. Instead , models based on Deep Neural Networks (DNN) began to be used , which proved to be much better.

    In 2012, Microsoft's director of development, Rick Rashid, first showed simultaneous translation between Chinese and English from the stage of a conference in China, and the translated speech sounded in the voice of Rashid himself:



    Last May, at the Recode Code Conference, the head of the Skype development department, Gurdip Singh Pall, spoke via Skype Translator with a German colleague in her native language. A report on this event has been posted on the Microsoft Research website.

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