Skype Translator in action

During the keynote demo of the Microsoft Global Energy Forum 2015, my colleague Roberto and I did a live Skype Translator conversation.  I recorded one of our rehearsals, and put it on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_VnnmITAJk. 

Here’s the scenario.  The Global Energy Forum is an oil & gas conference, so the conversation that we were having is around an oil/gas pipeline failure.  I found the problem in a command center, and communicated it to Roberto as a field engineer.  Roberto was speaking Spanish, and I spoke English.  Skype Translator (which is still in preview) was able to translate our conversation in real time so we could understand each other. 

Skype Translator did a pretty impressive job, considering Roberto was speaking quickly and I had the microphone way too close to my mouth!  There is a nice speech-to-text transcript of the conversation displayed as well, in an instant message format in the native language of the viewer. 

There is more information on the Skype Translator Preview at https://www.skype.com/en/translator-preview/.