Skype's real-time spoken translation can now handle Japanese

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

Microsoft's ambitious real-time translation engine for Skype has added another language to its roster: Japanese. With the addition of Japanese, Skype can now handle real-time translations of 10 spoken languages in voice and video calls. That's in addition to the 60 languages that are supported in text conversations.

Skype's real-time spoken translation can now handle Japanese

From Microsoft (opens in new tab):

Japanese has commonly been noted as one of the most difficult languages for native English speakers to learn, due to its entirely different grammatical structure and vocabulary belonging to the Japonic linguistic family. Japan has also become a beloved destination for both tourism and business, and we're excited for the potential benefit Skype Translator will bring to Japan, the community and our users.

The last language to be added to Skype's real-time spoken language translation engine was Russian in October. The full list of supported languages now includes English, Spanish, French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Arabic, and Japanese. If you want to try it out for yourself, you can get started by clicking the globe icon in Skype Windows Desktop or the Skype Translator button in Skype Preview for Windows 10.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

8 Comments
  • Need of Bengali language translator fifth largest language in world.
  • You should submit this via the feedback app to Microsoft. After submitting, share the feedback link with everyone you know that would benefit from this so they can upvote it.
  • Actually ~7th, Hindi is ~4th, it'll likely come before Bengali, but Bengali won't be too far behind.
  • This is incredible. I work for a Japanese-owned company in the US, so this will be invaluable. Now if they could just add Japanese camera translations to the Microsoft Translator app, that'd be great too (mainly so that when someone sends us some "sweet treats" I'll know before I put it in my mouth whether it's mint, green tea, or wasabi-flavored). And perhaps even more importantly, when are they going to add translation to Skype for Business? Every time they add a language, they cite it as a benefit for business, so I just can't understand why they don't make it a priority to add this functionality to the business version of their communication and collaboration tools.
  • The camera one will benefit me too, and if they add support for some Chinese it would make it even better.
  • Actually, it has had Chinese support for the last few years. :-)
  • I wouldn't get your hopes up--I tested it out tonight and it's really innaccurate. It's got a long way to go, but the potential is definitely there. It'll be quite exciting in a few years.
  • Need support for Indian Languages. Hindi, Tamil, Kannada, Bengali and other... It will benefit users and business alike.