SearchJust released on December 13th, Microsoft’s Translator App is available for iOS, Android, and Windows. There’s also a web version at http://translate.it and there’s even an Amazon Fire app. You have to be connected to the Internet in order to use as it relies on the Microsoft cloud to process your translations.
Microsoft Translator uses Microsoft Cognitive Services to apply machine learning and neural networks instead of the pre-determined logic of Statistical Machine Translation. This neural network is also applied to image and text translation for handling websites, images, and documents. As people use the service, their data (voice/text/image) is de-identified for privacy and stored for future use and analysis. This enables more accurate recognition over time as people use the service.
The best feature is “Conversation mode” which allows up to 100 people to join a single room supporting nine different spoken languages translated in real-time. Users join to the room will be able to speak and hear see responses in their native language. This can be great for tour groups where a guide can share content in multiple languages without having to say the same thing multiple times. Current supported spoken languages are Arabic, Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.
You can find out more about Translator App and other details about the Microsoft Translation API at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/translator/default.aspx.
