As a team member of Globalization Partners International (GPI),
a translation company that leverages global communication and
collaboration tools daily, I became an early adopter and fan of
Skype more than 10 years ago. Now it is an important
communication tool for all employees of GPI.
For people unfamiliar with Skype, I guess those people still do
exist, Skype was the brainchild of two Scandinavian entrepreneurs,
Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström. These men, with the help of
a team of Estonian programmers, first released Skype in August 2003
as telecommunication application software that provided the ability
to chat, followed by video chat and voice calls, including
conference calls and screen sharing. Over 10 years later
Skype remains mostly free, but subscribers must purchase Skype
credit in order to make calls to land lines and mobile phones; a
model called "freemium."
In 2005, Skype Technologies SA was acquired by eBay for $2.5
billion in cash and stocks, and in 2011, Microsoft Corporation
acquired Skype Communications for $8.5 billion and the company
became a new Microsoft division.
Microsoft Technology Enables Skype Translate
Microsoft's research and development team began working on
language translation software in 2009, when they took over the
funding of Geoff Hinton's work, which included developing a machine
learning model that mimicked the human brain, to gain a better
understanding of English speech [www.companiesandmarkets.com].
Microsoft used some of that technology to power their own Bing
Translate, but the collaboration with Skype has created an
ambitious endeavor to overcome language barriers by enabling the
internet-calling software to communicate in any language.
Business and ecommerce globalization have only increased demand
for language translation software and by 2020, the market for
global translation software is expected to reach over $71
billion. Skype Translate is aiming to be a major player in
that space and may very well revolutionize internet calling as we
know it.
How Does It Work?
Skype Translator is meant to give you the ability to communicate
in a language you don't speak or understand. You simply set up a
Skype video or call and begin speaking. Skype Translator is
currently available in English and Spanish but more languages will
follow soon.
According to Skype's website, when using Skype Translator:
Your conversation is translated into another language in near
real-time.
What someone else says is translated back in your
language.
An on-screen transcript of your call is displayed.
You can send instant messages across 40+ languages.
Preview Users
Individuals have the opportunity to preview Skype Translator,
demo and help fine-tune it by registering at http://www.skype.com/en/translator-preview/.
An email address and information regarding the device you are
making Skype calls from, and of course, what languages you are
interested in, are all required. For example, I am on Windows
7, have an Android phone and I am a native German speaker so I
selected those three as my options.
Skype states that it will initially support a few languages (I
assume the ones listed on the first page) and will only be
available on devices running Windows 8.1 and 10. There is limited
availability for preview testers so you may or may not get
selected.
I received a confirmation email which stated that the preview is
scheduled to begin the end of 2015 and an invitation will depend on
when you sign up, your language and device used. I will keep
readers posted should I be one of the lucky few to get picked.
In the meantime, I hope you will enjoy the following
English-German Skype Translator demo as much as I did. It was
presented last July at the Worldwide Partner Conference 2014 and
Microsoft posted this YouTube video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJIILew6l28
Skype and Localization
Skype currently supports the following locales and languages:
Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified),
Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German,
Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean,
Latvian, Lithuanian, Nepali, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese
(Brazilian and European), Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak,
Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and
Vietnamese.
Windows has, at least, an additional 31 full or partial
localizations available for some of the following languages:
Afrikaans, Albanian, Armenian, Basque, Belarusian, Bosnian, Breton,
Chuvash, Cornish, Georgian, Irish, Khmer, Macedonian, Mirandese,
Persian, Scottish Gaelic, Tamil, and Welsh.
It should be noted, however, that some countries restrict the
use of Skype, partially, or completely. For example, China
monitors text messages within China, as well as exchanges with the
outside world, and India no longer allows calls to mobile or
landlines via Skype. So, it will be very interesting to see
how countries, like China and India, will adopt this new
revolutionary technology, or perhaps not at all.
What Does The Future Hold?
As Gurdeep Pall wrote on Skype's Big Blog:
"This is just the
beginning of a journey that will transform the way we communicate
with people around the world. Our long-term goal for speech
translation is to translate as many languages as possible on as
many platforms as possible and deliver the best Skype Translator
experience on each individual platform for our more than 300
million connected users."
This line up of language capabilities, plus the support of
Microsoft, has created opportunities and possibilities that appear
to be limitless. I am very curious to see what the future
holds for real-time multilingual internet-calling software, which
may one day allow us to simultaneously communicate in dozens of
different languages and instantaneously comprehend one another.
Further Information on Social Media
As a diligent language translation
services agency, GPI always attempts to keep its customers and
followers up to date with useful information on social media, among
other topics. You can find additional information in one of
our previous blogs, "Top Tips for
Successful Multilingual SEO."
To appreciate just how far we've come in social media and social
networking, you may also enjoy reviewing some of our other
blogs:
Social Media
Localization
2011 The
Year of International Social Media
PubCon Part 1: Google's Matt Cutts shares his SEO vision
PubCon
Part 2: Social Media & Landing Page Optimization
PubCon
Part 3: Google Caffeine, Keywords and Blekko
Highlights
from Search Marketing Expo (SMX) 2011
Highlights from
International Search Summit 2011
Additional Resources on SEO and SEM:
GPI's SEO and localization teams will conduct your multilingual
keyword analysis, ranging from terminology accuracy equivalents to
keyword density factor evaluation and competition analysis.
GPI also offers
Global Search Engine Marketing Services and many other translation
and localization services.
For more information on issues specific to search engine
marketing, you may wish to review our previous blog on A Multilingual Search
Engine Marketing (SEM) Primer.
For information about country-specific localization and SEO
practices, please see
China: Land of
Search Engines, Search Marketing and Social Media
Arabic SEO and
Localization.
Contact GPI for more information via e-mail at info@globalizationpartners.com,
by phone at (866) 272-5874, or by requesting a free search engine
marketing and optimization quote
on your project.