Today, Microsoft is thrilled to announce the release of direct model customization to all customers. Customers have been required to create a model where one language had to be English. That changes today. This new capability allows customers to build Custom Translator models to translate documents from one non-English language to another non-English language. This method allows for greater accuracy, maintaining cultural sensitivity in the translation, as well as a better understanding of the nuances and idiomatic expressions of the source language. Direct custom translation engines can also save time and resources by eliminating the need for additional editing and proofreading, resulting in a more efficient and cost-effective translation process. 

Watch a 2-minute video on how to train and publish a direct custom model using Azure AI Translator.

“Transitioning through English as an intermediary in translations has shown its limitations, particularly when nuances and context, such as ‘sex’, become lost in translation. This not only risks accuracy but accumulates mistakes throughout the process. By adopting the direct model, we address these translation concerns.  For Belgium, a nation with official languages being Dutch, French and German, the business value of such an approach is huge. The tests we performed at CrossLang with the direct model have demonstrated that with only a handful of additional segments, the new engine surpasses previous benchmarks in performance,” said Tom Francis, CrossLang CEO. 

The direct model customization feature is easy to use and available to all users signed up for Translator in an Azure subscription. Users can select from a list of supported languages published in the Custom Translator release notes.

To learn more about Custom Translator and how it can help your business thrive in the global marketplace, start with the Custom Translator beginner’s guide.

What you can do with the Custom Translator feature in Azure AI Translator

• Build custom models with your domain specific terminology and translate real-time using the Translator API.
• Use Custom Translator with your translation solutions to help globalize your business and improve customer interactions.
• For more information, visit Microsoft Translator business solutions and Custom Translator release notes.

The post Custom Translator Direct Model Customization appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Seattle—May 23, 2023—Today during Microsoft Build 2023 we are happy to announce several tools and solutions for you to adopt Translator service with ease.

Announcing Document Translation feature in Language Studio, a ready-to-use consumption experience to translate documents in batches. Enterprise can adopt this solution across their organization by simply authorizing specific employees or employee groups to use the translator’s resource behind it. This feature would allow them to translate documents from their local or network storage hiding the complexity of uploading source documents to a cloud storage before translation.

Learn more: Technical blog on Document Translation feature in Language Studio

Announcing Microsoft Translator V3 connector for Power Automate platform as public preview, which enables workflow automation to translate text and documents. The new translator connector enables you to automate translation of documents in various clouds, local network, or local storage. You could also automate translation of text and document attachments on a support call, emails, etc.

Learn more: Technical blog on using Microsoft Translator V3 connector

Announcing Text Translator SDK as public preview in four programming languages – .Net, Python, Java, and JS. The SDK simplifies developer experience and reduces the need to assimilate API definitions.

Learn more: Technical blog on using Translator SDK

Announcing ‘Microsoft Translator’ Plugin for AOAI & Tools for PromptFlow as private preview. The plugin will allow you to translate a source text between any of the 125+ languages and dialects supported by Azure Cognitive Services Translator service using both general and custom translation models. Whenever the user sends a prompt request to AOAI, the GPT model will decide and invoke the Microsoft Translator plugin as required. Translator and Language Detect tools for PromptFlow helps user to get better responses for various prompts submitted to GPT in non-English languages.

Learn more: Blog on Translator Plugin for AOAI & Tools for PromptFlow

The post Translator announcements in Microsoft Build 2023 appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

What’s a bot?

A bot is an app that users interact with in a conversational way using text, graphics, or speech. It may be a simple question and answer dialog bot, or a sophisticated bot that allows people to interact with other services in an intelligent manner using AI. Bots can be used in scenarios such as customer support to answer customer questions without the need of a human customer support representative. View case studies of bots.

Use the Translator API for multilingual translations

Adding translation to your bot allows it to reach a larger audience without changing significant parts of your bot’s core programming.

The Microsoft Translator API service allows bots to interact in over 60 supported languages. Whether you’re communicating with customers or internal team members, multilingual bots can increase the number of users that can use your bot in their preferred language.

Learn how to add translation to your bot in the Azure Bot Service Documentation tutorial.

Image: “Run the bot to see replies in the user’s language” from Azure Bot Service Documentation

Learn More

• Try Microsoft Translator’s translation performance
• Microsoft Translator Text API Documentation
• Other Microsoft Cognitive Services on Azure

The post Communicate with customers in their language using multilingual bots appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

You have someone who is visiting from China, they don’t speak English.  How do you communicate with that person? Being able to break down those barriers to provide some form of access for the individual to be able to communicate with each other is really where this technology really comes to the four…it breaks down those barriers in ways that are really engaging and touching. – Will Lewis, Principal Technical Program Manager, Microsoft Translator

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript on the Easter Seals Tech site.

The post Assistive Technology podcast: Will Lewis talks about Microsoft Translator’s role in bridging communication gaps appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Now, developers can leverage Translator’s newest features and capabilities through ChatEngine, an open and extensible chat SDK and APIs for building 1:1 group chats quickly.

Register here and watch the free webinar – “Serverless Language Translation On-the-Fly with Microsoft Translator”.

The post Webinar: Learn how to use PubNub’s Translator BLOCK to build translation capabilities into your apps appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Read all about Word’s translation features here, and check out the Office 365 blog for more information about their latest features.

Check out more products that feature Microsoft Translator

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint
Translator for Edge
Translator live feature
Translator App

The post Mac users can now translate Microsoft Word documents into 60+ languages appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Use the new custom feature with the new Translator text translation API (V3) or the preview of the new unified Speech service. With the custom feature, you can now customize not only text translation, but speech translation as well.

With as few as 10,000 parallel sentences, i.e. human-generated translations, you can begin customizing your translations. The more data you have, the better the quality. For instance, below are a few examples of BLEU score (an industry standard translation quality measure) improvements for various datasets size and content type. The gain over the default NMT system can vary from go from a noticeable few BLEU points to a remarkable jump in quality of over 10 BLEU points.

To make training easier, the system also accepts data that is parallel at the document but is not yet aligned at the sentence level, so if you only have versions of the same content in multiple languages in separate documents (e.g. training manuals, web pages, leaflets, etc.) the custom feature will be able to automatically match sentences across documents. Also, if you have monolingual data in either or both languages, this data can be used to complement the parallel data to improve the translations.

Learn how the Translator custom feature works below and read the in-depth article on the Microsoft Research Blog.

To begin adding customized translations to your apps, workflows, and websites, sign up for the newest version of the Translator Text API or the preview of the new unified Speech service. Then get started at http://portal.customtranslator.azure.ai

This new custom feature comes with other Translator product releases for Microsoft Translator:

• The new version 3 of the Microsoft Translator Text API has a GDPR processor commitment via new controls. Learn more about GDPR.
• A preview of the new unified Speech service which combines the capabilities of the existing Translator Speech API, the Bing Speech API, and Custom Speech Service in a unified and fully customizable (speech to text, translation and text-to-speech) set of services.

Learn more

• Customized neural translation
• How machine translation works

The post Customize your neural translations with the new Translator custom feature appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

What’s New

The latest V3 release is the first end-to-end update of the API itself, offering several new translation features and capabilities:

• Natively neural: Modern neural machine translation (NMT) is the default for all supported languages. NMT better captures the context of full sentences before translating them, providing much higher quality translation and more human-sounding output. Learn more about how NMT works.
• GDPR compliant as a processor
• Support for the new Translator custom feature which enables users to build and deploy customized neural translation systems.
• Translate into multiple languages at once– V3 allows the application to translate into multiple languages with a single GET request. The previous version required separate API calls to translate the same text in multiple languages.
• Transliteration– Convert words and sentences from one script into another script. For instance, if your users translate from English to Arabic, they may not be able to read the Arabic script. The new transliteration feature allows you to offer the Arabic words written in Latin (i.e. English) letters.
• Bilingual dictionary– The new bilingual dictionary feature displays alternative translations from or to English, examples of words in context to help you choose the perfect translation, and even examples of translated sentences using this word. Already available on Translator for Bing, and in the Translator apps, this feature is now accessible to any developer.
• JSON formatting– All data sent to and received from the service is now in JSON format.

PubNub, a company that offers real-time infrastructure-as-a-service, has partnered with Microsoft Translator and has integrated Microsoft Translator’s latest version in its offering. Now, developers can leverage Translator’s newest features and capabilities through ChatEngine, an open and extensible chat SDK and APIs for building powerful 1:1 group chats quickly.

We’re excited to partner with Microsoft to bring AI-powered language translation to the world’s largest chat deployments. Through an integration with PubNub ChatEngine, it is now possible for any size enterprise to easily enhance their chat apps with powerful trans-lingual capabilities, while meeting the most demanding scaling, security and reliability requirements.  – Todd Greene, Co-Founder & CEO

How to get started

The new version is available through a regular Translator text API Azure subscription. To access the new feature, you can use your existing key and only change the appropriate parameters: end-point and API calls. Both the subscription and pricing tiers remain the same.

For existing V2 API users:

1. Review the V3 documentation at www.aka.ms/Translatorv3Docs
2. Learn how to modify your V2 code to use the V3 API at www.aka.ms/TranslatorV3migration
3. Use existing sample apps from the Translator Github repo to get you started

For new users: Follow the steps on our Get Started Page. It will also provide you with the complete documentation, sample code, and support contact. http://approjects.co.za/?big=en-us/translator/trial.aspx

Following the general availability of Version 3, the existing Version 2 will be deprecated starting May 1st. V2 will remain supported until 04/30/2019.

Translator V3 text API comes with other Translator product releases for Microsoft Translator:

• The custom feature allows for not only customized text translation, but speech translation as well. With as few as 2,000 parallel sentences, i.e. human generated translations, you can begin customizing your translations.
• A preview of the new unified Cognitive Services Speech which combines the capabilities of the existing Translator Speech API, Bing Speech API, and Custom Speech Service in a unified and fully customizable set of services: speech to text, translation, and text-to-speech

Learn more

Customized neural translation
How neural machine translation works

The post Introducing Translator Text API V3: natively neural with advanced capabilities appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Getting translations done has never been easier. The redesigned app features Cortana integration, support for Windows Ink and image translation, AI-powered offline translations, and a newly redesigned modern user interface. The new Microsoft Translator app will quickly become a productivity favorite pinned to your taskbar.

Integrated translation solution for Windows 10

The app supports over 60 languages, across text, voice, image, and Windows Ink translations.

Users will be able to:

• Listen to the translation: Hear a playback of the translation (Text-To-Speech technology)
• Learn more: Highlight any word and click “Dictionary” to look up the word’s possible translations. View example sentences in both languages to decide which translation works best given your particular context.
• Pin translations to view later within your History tab.
• Save the translations to a text file.
• Share translations through email, or any other Windows 10 apps such as OneNote, Skype, Twitter, etc.

In addition to translating short spoken sentences using the voice feature, users can also start or join translated conversations across multiple devices through the Translator live feature. To do this, users simply go to the Conversation menu, choose the language they’re speaking or typing, share the unique conversation code with others, and engage in a real-time translated conversation with up to 100 participants, each using their own Windows 10, Android, iOS or Kindle device.

The Translator live feature is available in 10 speech languages and over 60 text languages.

Reimagining translation productivity

The Windows 10 app comes fully loaded with a modern design and productivity-centric capabilities for both on- and off-line use. Join or start Translator live conversations using Cortana, reference our human-verified Phrasebooks while traveling, and import Word and text documents directly in the app.

Join Presentation Translator conversations

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint displays live subtitles in any of the over 60 supported languages. If the selected subtitle language is not one an audience member knows, they can follow along in the Translator app in their own language by entering the presentation’s unique conversation code into the app’s Conversation tab. Click here to download and start using Presentation Translator for PowerPoint.

Audience members can join Q&A sessions in their chosen language, while others see the response in their own language. Want to see how Presentation Translator works? Check out this video on how to get started with Presentation Translator for PowerPoint.

Cortana Integration

Starting and joining Translator live conversations on Windows 10 has never been easier. Simply say, “Hey Cortana, ask Translator to join conversation ABCDE”, and instantly join conversations directly within the app. You can also start conversations by saying, “Hey Cortana, ask Translator to start a conversation”, and the app will open the Conversation tab directly.

Phrasebook

The app also features the Phrasebook feature where you can browse phrases and quickly get their human-verified translation.

In the Phrasebook, you’ll find a variety of essential phrases for travel, directions, lodging, dining, and more.

Import text and Word documents directly in the app

Need to translate a few pages? Now you can import documents directly from the Text translation tab and save the translation in a text file.

Latest-generation translation technologies

The redesigned Windows 10 app uses the latest generation, AI-powered, neural machine translation technologies.

Offline Neural Network language packs

Translate text and images while offline through neural-network powered offline translation packs, available whenever and wherever you need them. These packs offer up to 23 percent better offline translation quality over competing best-in-class non-neural offline packs. This means that even when you’re not connected to the internet, offline translation quality using the Windows 10 app is closer to human translation than offline translations have ever been.

Click on the Language Packs tab, install a language pack while online, and the app will automatically use this pack for any of the app’s text and image translation capabilities while offline.

The new Windows 10 app uses the same translation technology you’re familiar with in other Microsoft Translator powered apps and services:

• Microsoft Office: Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, Excel, and OneNote
• Translator for Microsoft Edge plug-in
• Translator for Bing

Ready to start using the new Windows 10 app? Download it here (or update to the latest version if it’s already installed).

The post Discover the new Microsoft Translator Windows 10 app: redesigned for productivity appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

The new capabilities allow both end-users and third-party app developers to have the benefit of neural translation technology regardless of whether the device is connected to the cloud or offline. ​

When using the Microsoft Translator app, end users can now download free AI-powered offline packs. In addition, through the new Translator app local feature preview, Android developers will be able to quickly and easily integrate online and offline AI text translations into their apps.

New AI-powered offline language packs for the Translator apps for Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire

The development comes after two years of work, and it complements Microsoft’s overall effort to make sure developers and users can access AI-powered tools where their data is, whether that’s in the cloud or on a device. That ability, which experts refer to as edge computing, comes as experts are figuring out ways to run powerful AI algorithms without the massive computing power of the cloud.

Microsoft Translator released AI-powered online neural machine translation (NMT) in 2016. Because of the computing power needed to run these high-quality translation models, this capability was only available online. In the latter part of 2017, this capability was made available on specific Android phones equipped with a dedicated AI chip. It allowed their users to get offline translation quality that was on par with the quality of online neural translation.

Building on this initial work, the Translator team was able to further optimize these algorithms, allowing them to run directly on any modern device’s CPU without the need for a dedicated AI chip. The new Translator apps now bring NMT to the edge of the cloud for all Android, iOS, and Amazon Fire devices. Support for Windows devices is coming soon.

These new NMT packs produce higher quality translations, which are up to 23 percent better, and about 50 percent smaller than the previous non-neural offline language packs. These NMT packs are available in Translator’s most popular languages and new NMT languages will be added regularly. For the complete up to date list please check out https://translator.microsoft.com/help/articles/languages.

New Translator local feature preview for Android

For Android developers, the Translator app also now offers a preview of the new local feature, which enables developers to quickly and easily add text translation to any Android app that benefit from translation capabilities.

In addition, thanks to these new NMT offline packs, Android developers can for the first time add offline NMT to their apps, allowing their users to get access to NMT translated content without an Internet connection.

To integrate translation in their app, developers will just need to add some simple code that will use Android’s bound service technology with an AIDL interface to silently call the Translator app. The Translator app will do the rest. If the device is connected to the Internet, the Translator app will retrieve the translation from the Microsoft Translator service on Azure. If Internet connectivity isn’t available, the Microsoft Translator app will use the local NMT offline language packs to deliver this translation back to their app.

The feature is expected to graduate from preview to general availability within 90 days of the preview release.

When the device is online, translations can also leverage customized translation models that match the app and company’s unique terminology.*

Whether the app gets its translations online or offline, the local feature bills the developer’s existing Microsoft Cognitive Services Translator Text API subscription.* There is no need to create a new one and, as if the cloud API is being called directly, requests are not logged for either online or offline translations.

Learn more about how the local feature preview works in our GitHub documentation and sample app.

* During the preview, some features may not be available or may be available at no cost. Please refer to the documentation release notes for more information.

Learn more

• Microsoft aims to empower every developer for a new era of intelligent cloud and intelligent edge
• AI’s big leap to tiny devices opens a world of possibilities
• How machine translation works
• Microsoft Translator Text API
• Try the Microsoft Translator APIs for free

The post Microsoft brings AI-powered translation to end users and developers, whether you’re online or offline appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.