Today, we are introducing a new language to the ever-growing list of Translator languages – welcome Lower Sorbian! 

Adding Lower Sorbian to Translator was made possible by the Sorbian language community, in particular the Foundation for the Sorbian People, the Sorbian Institute and the Witaj Language Centre  which donated data to create the new language system, following up on our collaboration to build language support for Upper Sorbian last year. 

Beate Brězan, Head of the WITAJ Language Centre, states that “the addition of Lower Sorbian to Microsoft Translator is a valuable contribution to the preservation of our cultural identity. The ability to translate between Sorbian and more than 100 languages enables our speech community to write in our own language and be understood by others, and vice-versa.” 

Bernd Melcher, Head of the WITAJ Department in Lower Lusatia, highlights the positive impact of the language’s integration into Translator: “Now we can create much-needed textbooks, study materials, and other publications at a larger scale. And our students can use their mobile devices for quick look-up of words and even save the translations – very motivating!” 

Text translation for Lower Sorbian is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service, you can add Lower Sorbian text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services, such as Speech or Vision, to add additional capabilities such as speech and image translation into your apps. 

About the Lower Sorbian language 

Lower Sorbian (dolnoserbšćina) is a West Slavic minority language spoken in eastern Germany in the historical province of Lower Lusatia, today part of Brandenburg. Signs in this region are typically bilingual, and the city of Cottbus (Chóśebuz) has a Lower Sorbian High School where one language of instruction is Lower Sorbian. It is a heavily endangered language with less than 7,000 speakers. 

 Learn more about Lower Sorbian on Bing. 

 What you can do with Microsoft Translator 

At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.  Learn more 

At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator.  Learn more 

In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.  Learn more 

The post Introducing Lower Sorbian appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Today, we are delighted to announce that we have added three new Indian languages to Microsoft Translator – Konkani, Maithili, and Sindhi. Along with this, we are also adding support for Sinhala, the official language of Sri Lanka. With this latest release, Microsoft is further democratizing access to information in native languages for India. This brings our total number of supported languages to 128 and adds language support for 16 Indian languages including Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Odia, Punjabi, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, and Urdu. 

Text translation for the four new languages is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service, you can add Indian languages’ text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services, such as Speech or Vision, to add additional capabilities such as speech and image translation into your apps. 

About the Konkani language 

Konkani is primarily spoken by over 2 million people in the states of Goa, Maharashtra, and Karnataka. It is also spoken by a significant number of people in other parts of India, such as Kerala and Gujarat. 

 Learn more about Konkani on Bing. 

About the Maithili language 

Maithili is spoken by over 75 million people in India and Nepal. Popularly written in Devanagari script, it has its own script variously called Mithilakshara, Tirhuta, and Maithili. Maithili is mainly spoken in the northern regions of Indian state of Bihar, in parts of the state of Jharkhand and in the Terai regions of Nepal. The development of Maithili was championed by Dr. Girish Nath Jha, professor of Computational Linguistics at the School of Sanskrit & Indic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India), Dr. Ritu Nidhi and their team of research students.  We collaborated closely with the JNU community who helped with their expertise in machine translation and resource creation. 

 Learn more about Maithili on Bing. 

About the Sindhi language 

Sindhi is spoken by over 20 million people in Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan. 

 Learn more about Sindhi on Bing. 

About the Sinhala language 

Sinhala is spoken by over 16 million people in Sri Lanka, as well as in other countries such as Malaysia and Singapore.  

 Learn more about Sinhala on Bing. 

 What you can do with Microsoft Translator 

At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.  Learn more 

At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator.  Learn more 

In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.  Learn more 

The post Announcing four new languages: Konkani, Maithili, Sindhi and Sinhala  appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Today, we are excited to announce that we have added 13 new African languages to Microsoft Translator! Following last year’s release of Somali and Zulu, this release highlights our continued efforts of empowering African language communities to achieve more. Microsoft Translator now supports:

• chiShona (7 million speakers)
• Hausa (72 million speakers)
• Igbo (40 million speakers)
• Kinyarwanda (10 million speakers)
• Lingala (65 million speakers)
• Luganda (21 million speakers)
• Nyanja (1 million speakers)
• Rundi (12 million speakers)
• Sesotho (14 million speakers)
• Sesotho sa Leboa (15 million speakers)
• Setswana (13 million speakers)
• Xhosa (10 million speakers)
• Yoruba (55 million speakers)

This brings our total number of supported languages to 124 and adds language support for more than 335 million people in Africa and worldwide.

Text translation for the 13 new African languages is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Office, and Translator for Bing. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service, you can add African languages’ text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision to add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into your apps.

About the chiShona language

The chiShona language is spoken by 7 million people in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. The language is in the Bantu language family. Here are some useful phrases in chiShona:

Learn more about chiShona on Bing.

About the Hausa language

The Hausa language is spoken by 72 million people in Niger, Nigeria, and Benin, as well as throughout other West African countries. The language is in the Chadic branch of the Afroasiatic language family. Here are some useful phrases in Hausa:

Learn more about Hausa on Bing.

About the Igbo language

The Igbo language is spoken by 40 million people in Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea, and Cameroon. The language is in the Niger-Congo language family. Here are some useful phrases in Igbo:

Learn more about Igbo on Bing.

About the Kinyarwanda language

The Kinyarwanda language is spoken by 10 million people in Rwanda, Uganda, DR Congo, and Tanzania. The language is in the Bantu language family. It is officially known as Ikinyarwanda. Here are some useful phrases in Kinyarwanda:

Learn more about Kinyarwanda on Bing.

About the Lingala language

The Lingala language is spoken by 65 million people in DR Congo and the Republic of the Congo. The language is in the Bantu language family. Here are some useful phrases in Lingala:

Learn more about Lingala on Bing.

About the Luganda language

The Luganda language is spoken by 21 million people in Uganda. The language is in the Bantu language family. Here are some useful phrases in Luganda:

Learn more about Luganda on Bing.

About the Nyanja language

The Nyanja language is spoken by 1 million speakers in Malawi, Mozambique, and Zambia. The language is in the Bantu language family. It is also known as Chewa. Here are some useful phrases in Nyanja:

Learn more about Nyanja on Bing.

About the Rundi language

The Rundi language is spoken by 12 million speakers in Burundi, Rwanda, Tanzania, DR Congo, Uganda, and Kenya. The languages is in the Bantu family of languages. Here are some useful phrases in Rundi:

Learn more about Rundi on Bing.

About the Sesotho language

The Sesotho language is spoken by 14 million speakers in Lesotho, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The language is in the Bantu family of languages. It is also known as Sotho or Souther Sotho. Here are some useful phrases in Sesotho:

Learn more about Sesotho on Bing.

About the Sesotho sa Leboa language

The Sesotho sa Leboa language is spoken by 15 million speakers in South Africa. The language is in the Bantu family of languages. It is also known as Northern Sotho or Sepedi. Here are some useful phrases in Sesotho sa Leboa:

Learn more about Sesotho sa Leboa on Bing.

About the Setswana language

The Setswana language is spoken by 13 million people in Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Here are some useful phrases in Setswana:

Learn more about Setswana on Bing.

About the Xhosa language

The Xhosa language is spoken by 10 million people in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana. It is in the Bantu family of languages. Here are some useful phrases in Xhosa:

Learn more about Xhosa on Bing.

About the Yoruba language

The Yoruba language is spoken by 55 million people in Nigeria, Benin, and Togo. Here are some useful phrases in Yoruba:

Learn more about Yoruba on Bing.

What you can do with Microsoft Translator

At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.  Learn more

At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator.  Learn more

In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.  Learn more

The post Introducing 13 New African Languages appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

We’re excited to announce that, as of today, masculine and feminine alternative translations are available for when translating from English to Spanish, French, or Italian. You can try out this new feature in both Bing Search and Bing Translator verticals.

Over the last few years, the field of Machine Translation (MT) has been revolutionized by the advent of transformer models, leading to tremendous improvements in quality. However, models optimized to capture the statistical properties of data collected from the real world inadvertently learn or even amplify social biases found in that data.

Our latest release is a step towards reducing one of these biases, specifically gender bias that is prevalent in MT systems. Bing Translator has always produced a single translation for an input sentence even when the translations could have had other gender variations including feminine and masculine variants. In accordance with the Microsoft responsible AI principles, we want to ensure we provide correct alternative translations and are more inclusive to all genders. As part of this journey our first step is to provide feminine and masculine translation variants.

Gender is expressed differently across different languages. For example, in English, the word lawyer could refer to either a male or female individual, but in Spanish, abogada would refer to a female lawyer, while abogado would refer to a male one. In the absence of information about the gender of a noun like ‘lawyer’ in a source sentence, MT models may resort to selecting an arbitrary gender for the noun in the target language. Often, these arbitrary gender assignments align with stereotypes, perpetuating harmful societal bias (Stanovsky et al., 2019; Ciora et al., 2021) and leading to translations that are not fully accurate.

In the example below, you notice that while translating gender-neutral sentences from English to Spanish, the translated text follows the stereotypical gender role, i.e., lawyer is translated as being male.

As there is no context in the source sentence that implies the gender of the lawyer, producing a translation with the assumption of either a male or female lawyer would both be valid. Now, Bing Translator produces translations with both feminine and masculine forms.

System design

We aimed to design our system to meet the following key criteria for providing gendered alternatives:

1. The feminine and masculine variants should have minimal differences except for those needed to convey gender.
2. We wanted to cover a wide range of sentences where multiple gendered alternatives are possible.
3. We wanted to ensure that the translations preserve the meaning of the original source sentence.

Detecting gender ambiguity

In order to accurately detect gender ambiguity in source text, we utilize a coreference model to analyze inputs containing animate nouns. For instance, if a given input text contains a gender-neutral profession word, we only want provide gendered alternatives for it when its gender can’t be determined by other information in the sentence. For example: On translating an English sentence “The lawyer met her driver at the hotel lobby.” into French we can determine that the lawyer is female, while the gender of the driver is unknown.

Generating alternate translation

When the source sentence is ambiguously gendered, we examine our translation system’s output to decide if an alternative gender interpretation is possible. If so, we proceed to determine the best way to revise the translation. We begin by constructing a set of candidate target translations by rewriting the original translation. We apply linguistic constraints based on dependency relations to ensure consistency in the proposed alternatives and prune the erroneous candidates.

However, in many cases, even after applying our constraints, we are left with multiple candidate rewrites for the gendered alternative translation. To determine the best option, we evaluate each candidate by scoring it with our translation model. By leveraging the fact that a good gender rewrite will also be an accurate translation of the source sentence, we are able to ensure high accuracy in our final output.

Leveraging managed online endpoints in Azure Machine Learning

The gendered alternative feature in Bing is hosted on managed online endpoints in Azure Machine Learning. Managed online endpoints provide a unified interface to invoke and manage model deployments on Microsoft-managed compute in a turnkey manner. They enable us to take advantage of scalable and reliable endpoints without being concerned about infrastructure management. This inference environment also enables the processing of large numbers of requests with low latency. Our ability to create and deploy the gender debias service with the latest frameworks and technologies has been greatly improved through the use of managed inference features in Azure Machine Learning. By leveraging these features, we have been able to maintain low COGS (Cost of Goods Sold) and ensure straightforward security and privacy compliance.

How can you contribute?

To facilitate progress in gender bias reduction in MT, we are releasing a test corpus containing gender-ambiguous translation examples from English into Spanish, French and Italian. Each English source sentence is accompanied by multiple translations, covering each possible gender variation.

Our test set is constructed to be challenging, morphologically rich and linguistically diverse. This corpus has been instrumental in our development process. It was developed with the help of a bilingual linguists with significant translation experience. We are also releasing a technical paper that discusses the test corpus in detail and the methodology and tools for evaluation.

GATE: A challenge set for Gender-Ambiguous Translation Examples – Paper

GATE: A challenge set for Gender-Ambiguous Translation Examples – Test set

Path forward

Through this work we aim to improve the quality of MT output in cases of ambiguous source gender, as well as facilitate the development of better and more inclusive natural language processing (NLP) tools in general. Our initial release focuses on translating from English to Spanish, French, and Italian. Going forward, we plan to expand to new language pairs, as well as cover additional scenarios and types of biases.

Credits:

Ranjita Naik, Spencer Rarrick, Sundar Poudel, Varun Mathur, Jeshwanth Kumar Chandrala, Charan Mohan, Lee Schwartz, Steven Nguyen, Amit Bhagwat, Vishal Chowdhary.

The post Bing’s gendered translations tackle bias in translation appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Language centric translation with rolling history

With an intuitive interface built on top of upgraded Azure Cognitive Services providing real-time translations, Microsoft Translator app allows you to translate text, speech, and images in more than 100 languages without having to worry about changing languages as you hop from speech translation to image translation or to text translation. Start by selecting your translation languages and the app will indicate which modes are supported for the language pair, such as speech translation, image translation and/or text translation. View your translation history on the same page as you continue translating new phrases.

Improved speech translation experience with continuous Language Identification (LID)

Our most exciting new advancement is an improved speech translation experience which lets AI auto-detect your spoken language. We have incorporated a new AI technology in Cognitive Services, continuous Language Identification (LID), into speech translation where two people can have natural and continuous conversations without the interruption of selecting source/target audio languages or tapping the microphone each time someone speaks. We have added a new microphone with stars icon which appears when both selected languages support continuous LID.

Improved image translation experience

We transitioned from an offline OCR (Optical Character Recognition) engine to the best-in-class online OCR engine powered by Azure Cognitive Services. This new experience offers high quality image translation with expanded language coverage.

Enriched multi-device conversation with transcript and auto-generated meeting topics

Want to have long conversations with someone or a group who is not fluent in your language? Use the conversation feature by tapping on the icon located on top-right corner of the app to transcribe a single person’s speech or translate multiple users within a group. Stay on top of conversations by accessing the transcripts and using meeting topics to navigate within a transcript.

Don’t let language barriers hold you back. With support for more than 100 languages (https://aka.ms/applanguages), you’ll be able to communicate with ease. Download Microsoft Translator app now and see how you can connect with people from different cultures and backgrounds. We will release a similar redesigned experience in Android soon!

Check out the Microsoft Translator app video.

The post Introducing the redesigned Microsoft Translator app for iOS appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Effective collaboration and communication in a chat requires tools and features that understand who you are, where and how you like to communicate. Microsoft Teams on mobile devices can understand customers’ preferred languages and how customers like to interact with their contacts. When collaborators are chatting in different languages, the intelligent message translation feature uses their account preferences to inform the user when they would benefit from translation, and then personalizes chat translation behavior.

Microsoft Teams for iOS & Android mobile devices introduces intelligent message translation in chats. When a user receives a chat message in a language they don’t understand, Teams informs them with a prompt to translate the chat message into the user’s preferred language. The user can also personalize their chat translation behavior by turning on automatic translation.

How does it work?

When you receive a chat message in an unfamiliar language, Teams will prompt you with the option to translate it to your preferred language.

Tap Translate to translate the message.

Tap Never translate (language) if you don’t need translation for the language. Teams will stop showing you translations for that language and the language will be added to the Never translate list in Teams mobile. You can make edits to your language preferences in Teams by tapping your profile, select Settings, under General, select Translation. To remove a language from the Never translate list, delete it to undo the change.

The Help icon to the right of Never translate (language) allows you to provide feedback that will be used to improve language detection in Teams.

After using the translation feature a few times, Teams will prompt you with the option to turn on auto-translation to automatically translate messages to your preferred language.

This translation experience is available in the latest release of Microsoft Teams for iOS & Android mobile devices. By default, your translation language will be set to your Teams language.

If you want to change your default language:

1. Tap your profile picture in Teams.
2. Tap Settings. under General, select Translation. From there, you can customize your translation settings.
3. Teams supports translation to and from more than 100 languages.

Manage all your Teams mobile translation preferences in your profile Settings, under General, select Translation.

The post Announcing intelligent message translation in Microsoft Teams for mobile devices appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Using Microsoft Speech Translation technology powered by Azure Cognitive Services, live translation for captions in Teams supports 40 spoken languages. Live translation for captions is ideal in meetings with multi-lingual users and audiences as it supports one spoken language and multiple displayed text (subtitle) languages. Adding translation to live captions allows for more engaging, inclusive, and productive meetings.

Live translation for captions is temporarily available as a preview for all Microsoft Teams customers. After the preview period, to use live translation for captions, meeting organizers will need the Teams Premium offering. Learn more about Microsoft Teams Premium here.

The post Announcing live translation for captions in Microsoft Teams appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

In keeping with our goal to provide users with the best translation experience possible and maintaining consistency with our Translator mobile apps, the upcoming web app will no longer require a login account. This means that the ability to start and host a conversation from the web app will be removed and the preset conversation feature will be retired. The simplified web app experience will only allow users to join conversations that are started in the Translator mobile apps.

With the Microsoft Translator mobile app, users will still be able to start and host conversation sessions and they can continue to share the session codes with others using either the Translator web app or mobile apps. The session join process will remain the same wherein participants simply need to input the five-character code, visit the host’s URL, or scan the host’s QR code to join the session.

The Microsoft Translator mobile app is available for Android and iOS and offers translation for text, speech, images as well as translated multi-device conversations.

The Group Transcribe app is available for iOS and it provides real-time transcription and translation for in-person conversations.

The post Transitioning the Microsoft Translator web app to a simplified experience appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Today, we’re introducing Faroese text and document translation to Microsoft Translator! This announcement comes as the Faroe Islands celebrate Flag Day—an annual holiday to commemorate the international recognition of the Faroese flag during World War II.

Faroese text translation is available now in the Microsoft Translator apps, Translator for Bing, and Office. Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service you can add Faroese text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting. You can also use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision to add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into your apps.

About the Faroese language

Faroese is spoken on the Faroe Islands and abroad by about 72,000 people. The Faroe Islands are located in the northern Atlantic Ocean between Norway and Iceland and are a self-governing country within the Kingdom of Denmark. Faroese is a Germanic language, descended from Old West Norse spoken by Vikings in the Middle Ages. Related languages include Norwegian and Icelandic.

Here are some useful phrases in Faroese:

Learn more about Faroese

What you can do with Microsoft Translator

At home
Translate real-time conversations, menus and street signs, websites, documents, and more using the Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android.  Learn more

At work
Globalize your business and customer interactions with customizable text and document translation using Azure Cognitive Services Translator.  Learn more

In the classroom
Create a more inclusive classroom for both students and parents with live captioning and cross-language understanding.  Learn more

The post Introducing Faroese translation for Faroese Flag Day! appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Today we’re adding two new languages, Basque and Galician, to the list of languages supported by Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service. Basque and Galician are both Western European languages spoken by 750,000 and 2.4 million people respectively.

Basque is a language isolate, meaning it is not related to any other modern language. Basque is spoken in northern Spain and southern France in a region that straddles the Pyrenees Mountains. Galician is spoken in northern Portugal and western Spain. It is a Romance language that is closely related to Portuguese. Both languages are co-official languages of Spain.

Using Translator, you can translate to or from any of 100+ languages and dialects, now including Basque and Galician. As we continue to add new languages, Translator is available to help people translate in their personal lives, to help businesses expand their global reach, and is also used to help preserve at-risk and endangered languages.

Break the language barrier

The goal of Translator is to break the language barrier so that people can communicate freely in their language of choice and be understood by anyone around the globe. Whether you are a tourist travelling abroad, recently moved to a new country, or trying to email someone on the other side of the world, Translator powers the tools that help you communicate when and where you need.

The Microsoft Translator app for iOS and Android is your multifunctional personal translator. With the Microsoft Translator app, you can translate text, voice, images, and conversations. Translator for Bing is also available to translate text quickly on the web. You can use the Translator feature of the Edge browser to read webpages from around the world, you can quickly switch between languages on your mobile device with SwiftKey, and use Outlook to communicate with people via email regardless of the language they speak.

Expand the reach of your business

Translator is integrated into Microsoft products and is available as a service to help expand the reach of your business. With Microsoft 365, previously known as Office, you can instantly translate your Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to make them accessible to a worldwide workforce or global customer base. You can also translate your Outlook emails to communicate around the globe.

Using Translator, a Microsoft Azure Cognitive Service you can add text translation to your apps, websites, workflows, and tools; or use Translator’s Document Translation feature to translate entire documents, or volumes of documents, in a variety of different file formats preserving their original formatting.

You can also build neural translation systems that understand the terminology used in your own business and industry with Custom Translator. The customized translation system can then be used with Text and Document Translation to seamlessly integrate into existing applications, workflows and websites.

To add additional capabilities such as speech-to-text and image translation into your apps, you can use Translator with Cognitive Services such as Speech or Computer Vision.

Preserving endangered languages

In order to train new language models, we must collect a large amount of bilingual training data. That is, materials written in the target language and another language. As many languages around the globe are dying, Translator is helping to preserve at-risk languages. We have worked with language communities across the world to collect and translate materials, and then create language systems. Through this we can ensure that these languages are recorded and preserved for generations to come.

Some of the at-risk languages that we have worked to preserve include Inuktitut, Māori, and Yucatec Maya. If your language community is interested in partnering with Microsoft to add your language to Translator and the products that are using it, and you have access to digital documents in your language and another commonly spoken language, please contact us using this form.

The post Break the language barrier with Translator — now with two new languages! appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.