On the back of experiencing some down time last week, online communication service Skype now has real-time voice translation for all Windows PC and tablet users.
The ground-breaking feature — which we first saw during a preview last year — can translate voice languages English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish, as well as 50 messaging languages, in real-time.
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“It has been a long-time dream at Skype to break down language barriers and bring everyone across the globe closer together,” Skype writes in the blog announcement, adding that hundreds of thousands of people have already been testing the app since December last year.
Read more: Microsoft reveals Skype Translate: a real time voice interpreter
The feature is built on “world-class” machine learning technology which means that it gets smarter and more accurate the more it’s used.
“This opens up a whole new world of possibilities to do even more together across not only distances, but also languages,” the Skype team writes. It shares inspirational examples of a student who managed to plan year-long study abroad trip to China relying only on Skype Translator, and a PhD student who enhanced his thesis research with the help of experts in other countries.
Unfortunate for Apple fanboys, the Skype Translator is only available to those running Windows 7, 8, 8.1 or Windows 10 on their PC or tablet.
The update will be introduced to the Skype for Windows desktop app over the next few weeks. If you don’t already have Skype, you can go ahead and download it here.
