Microsoft Translator picks up 6 new text to speech languages

Translator (Image credit: Windows Central)

Microsoft has slowly been growing the list of languages supported by its text to speech function in Microsoft Translator, which lets you play translated text in its native accent. This week, that list grew a bit more, with six new languages joining the fray (opens in new tab). That brings the total number of supported text to speech languages to 36.

Here's a look at what's new:

Bulgarian
Croatian
Malay
Slovenian
Tamil
Vietnamese

Text to speech can come in handy if you're learning how to pronounce words, or if you're traveling to a new country and need to ask for directions or some other sort of assistance. All you have to do is type a word or phrase in your language to have it translated to the target language, then press the speaker button to have the translated text played out loud in its native accent.

According to Microsoft, the six new languages are available now in the Translator app for Android, as well as the Microsoft Translator Text and Speech APIs. Support for the new languages is expected to come to the Translator app for iOS, Microsoft Translator live, and Translator for Bing "soon," Microsoft says.

See at Google Play (opens in new tab)
See at the App Store (opens in new tab)
See at Microsoft Store (opens in new tab)

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the Editor in Chief for Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. Got a hot tip? Send it to daniel.thorp-lancaster@futurenet.com.

4 Comments

Finally something for us in Croatia !
So they place lower priority on their own ecosystem and expect developers to place emphasis on it. Sigh. You would expect these changes to come to bing first so that bing's useage numbers goes up. Then ios and android, they really have their priorities misplaced. If you are launching a new mobile device, you would want all the services and apps ready and matured for release. Sure, placing these apps on competitor ecosystem allows them to get telemetry data. But at the expense of entrenching more people into their competitor ecosystems and smart devices. Such an expense is too great as it not only drives developers away, it reduces mind share of their own ecosystem amongst the enterprise, consumer and developer sector. As why would anyone explore alternatives when they can have an ecosystem of devices and better experience of Microsoft's services - which is frankly better than the experience in their own ecosystem - as rest of the world is left with barebones and all the goodies are locked to the US only. This self sabotaging is what will cause Microsoft to fail and fail hard.
So how long before we can all have universal translators placed in our heads? That would certainly make life easier to speak and hear every language at the same time.
That would reduce incentives to learn the international language, which would be vastly detrimental to the individuals involved. Also it would put non-English speakers at the mercy of the translation providers' biased political agenda and force their propaganda on the users.