credit: Photo of Beit ed-Dine in Lebanon by Oida666 from Wikimedia Commons

Levantine, our 11^th speech language, is a spoken dialect of Arabic which has over 32 million native speakers.  Since it’s a spoken language that is rarely written, it lacks the large amount of parallel data required to train a usable machine translation system. As with any AI system, without the appropriate amount of data to train the neural machine translation model, the system won’t be able to produce translations that are good enough for real-life use.

However, our researchers developed a novel approach which utilizes monolingual data to train a system for any spoken dialect. This allowed the team to build a working Levantine to English translation system despite this lack of parallel data.

“We adapted a system trained on standard Arabic-to-English translation to be used on a spoken Arabic dialect (Levantine) using only monolingual data of the spoken dialect. We developed an approach to generate synthetic parallel data from monolingual data.” – Hany-Hassan Awadalla, Principal Research Scientist 

Levantine is now available as a supported speech translation language through the Translator apps, Presentation Translator for PowerPoint, the Skype Translator feature in Skype for Windows 10, and the unified Speech translation service, an Azure Cognitive Service. With this service, developers can also customize speech transcriptions, translations, and text-to-speech, before integrating them into their apps, workflows, and websites.

Recently, Microsoft has partnered with the No Lost Generation Tech Task Force, led by NetHope, and one of its members – Norwegian Refugee Council – to co-create an AI-powered solution linking youth affected by Syrian and Iraqi conflicts with educational resources. Their goal is to enable conflict-affected youth to discover and access learning resources anywhere and anytime.

“Many of the conflict-affected youth lack access to learning resources which restricts their opportunities for higher education and dignified work. Levantine support in Microsoft Translator opens up opportunities for them to learn in their native language through real-time translation of online courses and remote mentoring.” – Leila Toplic, NLG Tech Task Force Lead, NetHope

Start and join live, multilingual conversations with up to 100 people

Using the Translator app’s live conversation feature, users can have live, real-time conversations with people who speak other languages, on their own device, in their chosen language.

Let’s say you’re a Lebanese business person travelling to Italy and want to have a conversation with an Italian partner. You can speak Levantine into your phone or PC, and the Levantine audio will be translated into Italian text and speech on your partner’s phone or PC. This also works in reverse: the Italian speaker can speak into their device and have real-time multilingual conversations, and the listener receives the response in Arabic. This scenario is not limited to two devices or two languages. It can support up to 100 devices, across 11 speech translation languages, and over 60 text translation languages. To learn more about the Translator live feature go to http://translate.it or watch this how-to video.

Use your phone as a personal, Levantine translator

Levantine speakers can also have translated, bilingual conversations using only one device by tapping the microphone icon and using the split-screen conversation feature in the app.  Simply select your speech languages, German and Levantine for instance, and use the app’s microphone button to speak in your chosen language. Translated text appears on the split-screen in each language.

Download the Microsoft Translator app.

Present in PowerPoint in Levantine and add translated subtitles in over 60 languages

Presentation Translator allows users to offer live, subtitled presentations straight from PowerPoint. As you speak, the add-in powered by the Microsoft Translator live feature, allows you to display subtitles directly on your PowerPoint presentation in any one of more than 60 supported text languages. This feature can also be used for audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Additionally, up to 100 audience members in the room can follow along with the presentation in their own language, including the speaker’s language, on their phone, tablet or computer. This can also be used with the presenter’s language to support accessibility scenarios.

For example, if you’re presenting to a Levantine speaking audience and speak Spanish, you can choose Spanish as your speech translation language, and Arabic as the subtitle language. As you speak Spanish, your words will get translated to Arabic subtitling in real-time on the screen.

Levantine speakers can now also join and use their phone to ask questions, in Levantine, once the presenter unmutes the audience. This feature is useful for Q&A sessions after a presentation.

If there are audience members who speak other languages, they can follow along with the presentation in their chosen language in the Translator app or at http://translate.it.

API for Developers: Speech translations with the unified Speech services (preview)

Levantine is also available for developers through the Azure Cognitive Services Speech service.  In addition to using the default speech translation models from Levantine, developers can also customize speech transcriptions and translation models using the Custom Speech (http://customspeech.ai) and Custom Translator (http://customtranslator.ai) services.

Developers can then easily integrate speech translation into their apps using the new speech SDK available in several popular programming languages.

To learn more about Microsoft Translator for business, visit the Microsoft Translator site.

The post Microsoft Translator launches Levantine Arabic as a new speech translation language appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Microsoft Translator is excited to announce the launch of our latest AI-powered text translation language: Icelandic. It is the first publicly available neural machine translation (NMT) system.

Building this system  was a significant technical challenge for the research team due to the limited amount of available training data.

To achieve the required translation quality, the team tested and relied on several innovative approaches, some new to NMT, and some derived from other work done for other languages.

The Icelandic system used a training technique similar to the one used in this ground breaking research project. Using this technique, the team was able to improve translation quality by generating additional training data from monolingual data translated with the initial translation system.

Although seemingly counter intuitive at first, the NMT system was able to use the massive amounts of translated data created by this machine translated data to retrain the system. It produced a significant increase in translation quality measured by the industry standard BLEU score, and by human evaluations. Additional techniques were employed to help improve the final system quality, such as Byte Pair Encoding (BPE), a technique initially developed for data compression purposes.

The support of Icelandic in Microsoft Translator was highly recognized by the Icelandic president, Mr. Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, who visited Microsoft headquarters in connection to his trip to Seattle for the opening of the Nordic Museum.

Icelandic is now available on all Microsoft Translator apps, add-ins, Office, Translator for Bing, and through the Azure Cognitive Services Translator API for developers.

Communicating to and from Icelandic: Apps & Add-Ins

Learn how to start communicating to and from Icelandic through our apps and add-ins below.

Microsoft Translator Apps

Available on Android, iOS, Kindle Fire, and Windows 10 devices, the Microsoft Translator app supports the following use cases.

Text translation. Type or paste text and translate it in over 60 text translation languages.

Multi-person conversation translation using the live feature. While traveling abroad, you can have live real-time conversations with people who speak other languages, on your own device, in your chosen language. Let’s say you speak one of Microsoft Translator’s ten speech translation languages, such as Spanish, and want to have a conversation with an Icelandic speaker. You can speak Spanish into your phone, and the Spanish audio will be translated into Icelandic text on the other person’s device. This also works in reverse: the Icelandic speaker can type* into their device and reply to the conversation, and the Spanish speaker receives the response in Spanish. This scenario is not limited to two devices or two languages. It can support up to 100 devices across 10 speech translation languages and over 60 text translation languages. To learn more about the Translator live feature go to http://translate.it

Translate websites on Safari using the Microsoft Translator browser extension for iOS. When you download the Translator app on iOS, you automatically have access to the Safari translation add-in. Open safari, tap Settings, and choose your Safari Translation Language. After choosing your language, open any localized website in Safari, tap the Share button, and the Microsoft Translator icon to translate the web content.

Translate text directly in other apps using the contextual text translation extension for Android. There’s no need to switch to the Translator app to translate text in Android. If you have the Translator app downloaded onto your device, this feature will automatically translate text within other apps where the “Share” feature is available. Simply highlight the text, tap the Share button, and tap the Microsoft Translator icon to see the translation.

Download the app on  Android, iOS, or Windows 10.

Presentation Translator for PowerPoint (Windows only)

PowerPoint users can now display live, translated subtitles in Icelandic by speaking in one of the 10 supported speech translation languages. Presentation Translator for PowerPoint gives audience members the opportunity to follow along on their own device, in their chosen text language. Download and learn more.

Translator for Outlook add-in

Translate email messages to and from Icelandic across devices using an Outlook.com or Office365 email address. Read our blog for a complete list of features, and download the add-in here.

Translator for Microsoft Edge

Translate web pages from or to Icelandic across over 60 other languages using the Microsoft Edge Translator extension. Download the extension here.

Translator for Microsoft Word

Translate entire Word documents into over 60 text translation languages by selecting the “translate” icon from the “review” tab of the ribbon. The translated text will show up in a new Word document and will maintain its original formatting, including tracked changes and comments! Learn how to start using Translator for Microsoft Word.

Translator for Bing

Translate text and entire websites into Icelandic directly in your browser with Translator for Bing.

Icelandic translation for businesses and developers

The Microsoft Translator API helps integrate translation support for any solution across all sectors from manufacturing, retail, gaming, education, financial services, government services, and many more.

Part of Azure Cognitive Services, the Microsoft Translator API is used by businesses worldwide for web localization and e-commerce, internal communication, customer support, and business intelligence.

This week, we launched the latest version of the Translator Text API, version 3, which comes with other Translator product releases:

• 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

To learn more about Microsoft Translator for business, visit the Microsoft Translator business site.

*Icelandic speech to text not yet available.

The post Microsoft Translator adds Icelandic as a supported language appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Today, Microsoft Translator announces the availability of its 10^th speech translation language: Japanese. This new language is now available across all Microsoft Translator supported technologies and products along with the already released nine other speech translation languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Microsoft Translator is the first end-to-end speech translation solution optimized for real-life conversations (vs. simple human to machine commands) available on the market. It is one of the services in Microsoft’s portfolio of artificial intelligence technologies designed to make AI accessible to all.

Speech translation is a hard problem to solve, as is always the case when machines are trying to mimic a deeply human capability.  It uses two neural-network based Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies: Automatic Speech Recognition and Machine Translation. It also uses a unique natural language processing technology (TrueText) and a speech synthesizer, aka “Text to Speech”, which enables users to hear, and not only read, the translation.

These technologies are then connected to perform the speech translation function:

1. The sound is transcribed into text through the speech recognition AI
2. TrueText then processes this text to remove unnecessary speech elements, such as redundant words or fillers like “um” (English) or “eto” (Japanese), that would generate poor translations
3. The machine translation AI then translates each word using the context of the full sentence
4. Finally, the text to speech generates the audio output from this translated text

With this release, businesses, developers, and end users alike will be able to use Japanese in the various apps and services offered or powered by Microsoft Translator:

• For presentations, meetings or any other multi-devices translation use cases with the Microsoft Translator live feature. This personal universal translator feature is available at http://translate.it and on the Windows, Android,  iOS, and Amazon Fire Translator apps
• Microsoft Translator API for developers to add speech translation to their applications
• The Skype Translator feature in Skype for Windows desktop and the
  Windows 10 Skype Preview app to call between Skype clients or from Skype to any phone number in the world with a Skype Out subscription (available in the Skype Preview app only)

You can translate any of the supported 10 Translator speech languages into any of the supported 60+ Translator text languages.

In addition to the availability of Japanese as a speech translation language, starting today, all text translations from English to Japanese (and vice-versa) in Microsoft products and services will exclusively use these new and improved neural network translations system. Whether you translate a webpage in Edge, an email in Outlook, or a simple sentence on www.bing.com/translator, all of your translations will be performed with our state of the art neural network systems.

Read more about this news in our Microsoft Japan blog (in Japanese)

Learn More

• What is machine translation?
• Microsoft Translator Speech API
• Microsoft Translator apps
• Microsoft Translator FAQ
• Microsoft Cognitive Services

The post Japanese becomes the 10th speech translation language supported by Microsoft Translator appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

One of the most important innovations from Microsoft Translator was showcased earlier this year. During a  talk at the Code Conference, by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, unveiled an early look at the Skype Translator app. This app represents a breakthrough in language translation jointly developed by Microsoft researchers and Skype engineers, bridging geographic and language barriers through the use of real-time speech-to-speech translation.The functionality combines Skype voice and instant messaging, Microsoft Translator and machine-learning based technologies for speech recognition used in Windows and Windows Phone Translation applications.

In addition to the Skype Translator app, below is a summary of additional highlights from Microsoft Translator over the last year:

• Song Translator App – Last fall, our Translator Summer Interns: Michelle Agcamaran, Priya Ganesan, and Kat Zhou built an app to showcase the capabilities of Translator and our partners in a new and interesting way. After three months of work they launched: Song Translator. The song translation app allows users to upload their favorite songs with lyrics, add timestamps to the lyrics, then translate and record the song in another language.
• Release of Welsh – In February, Microsoft Translator is announced Welsh as a new supported language in partnership with the National Assembly for Wales and leveraging the Microsoft Translator Hub. The Welsh became the latest to join a growing list of languages to benefit from translation services provided by Microsoft Translator.
• Blog Plug In – Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc. released a new Bing Translator plugin that lets you apply the power of Bing Translator to any WordPress site running version 3.8 or later to translate your site into any of the 45+ supported languages. Adding WordPress to the list of blogging sites including Tumblr.
• App Localization – This year Multilingual App Toolkit (MAT) team announced the release of MAT 3.1. The Multilingual App Toolkit integrates with Microsoft Visual Studio to provide Windows Store apps and Windows Phone apps with translation support powered, translation file management, and editor tools powered by Microsoft Translator.
• Yammer Language Support – Earlier this year, Yammer announced key localization updates across its web client, mobile apps, and the Yammer Success Center, and introduced message translation in both the iOS and Android Yammer apps, powered by Microsoft Translator®. 
• Updates to Windows and Windows Phone Translator Apps –  Over the past year updates were released for Windows and Windows Phone Translator apps which include: speech-to-speech for Windows app, new offline language packs, new language support for camera, keyboard modes, user interface design improvements, amongst many other updates and improvements.

Real-time communication and collaboration technologies from video conferencing to social media have removed the physical barriers of communication and today translation technology is paving the way for removing the barrier of language in the same way. The Microsoft Translator team is committed to helping to enable business, communities, and consumers to be able to communicate and collaborate regardless of language through technology innovation.

This is just a small sampling of the many things that Microsoft Translator has been working on over the past year, to learn more about what Microsoft Translator has been up to, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.

Happy translating!
 

The post Microsoft Translator Celebrates International Translation Day appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

During Nadella’s conversation with Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg of the Re/code tech website relating to a new era of personal computing, he asked Gurdeep Pall, Microsoft Corporate Vice President for Lync and Skype, to join him on stage. While on stage, Pall demonstrated for the first time publicly the Skype Translator app, with Pall conversing in English with German-speaking Microsoft employee Diana Heinrichs.

Watch the Demo

Your browser does not support iframes.

Speech has been a natural evolution of the translation work that Microsoft has been delivering to consumers and businesses across a broad number of products and solutions. The work represents over a decade of work within Microsoft Research that has become a reality through a series of remarkable research advances in translation, speech recognition, and language processing. This demonstration is the next step in delivering the real time speech translation experience to users that Rick Rashid, then the worldwide head of Microsoft Research, demonstrated a year and a half ago.

The Skype Translator app will available first on Windows 8 later this year as a limited beta.

It has been an exciting day as we unveil this remarkable technology advancement that brings people one step closer to removing barriers of communication regardless of language or location!

Learn More about Skype Translator

• Skype Translator from Microsoft Video
• TechNet Blog Post from Gurdeep Pall, Corporate Vice President of Skype and Lync at Microsoft
• Microsoft Research Feature Story: Enabling Cross-Lingual Conversations in Real Time
• Code Conference Coverage of the Demo

The post Unveiling Breakthroughs in Real-Time Translation with Skype Translator appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Using the plugin, visitors can translate a site into any of the 40+ supported languages in one click without leaving the page once this light-weight, cross-browser plugin is installed. This plugin also provides options for a setting a color scheme, as well as an option to allow visitors to suggest translations.

The Bing Translator plugin should be installed from within the WordPress Dashboard by clicking on Plugins >Add New and search for “Bing Translator” and works on any WordPress site. A site developer can also manually install the plugin by downloading it from WordPress.org, then adding the “bing-translator” folder in the “/wp-content/plugins/” directory.

Using Bing Translator Plugin for WordPress Video

More Links to Get Started

• Blog Post from Microsoft Open Technologies
• Translator Plugin Site on WordPress.org
• Installing & Configuring the Bing Translator for WordPress
• Using the Bing Translator for WordPress
• Adding Bing Translator to WordPress using WordPress Widgets
• Adding Bing Translator to WordPress using Shortcodes
• Adding Bing Translator to WordPress using PHP Template Tags

Congratulations to Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc team for their great work on the Bing Translator Plugin for WordPress! 

The post Bing Translator Plugin for WordPress Enables Webmasters and Developers to Localize Site Content appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Now users can leverage the power of speech-to-speech translations from any Windows device. Simply speak into your device by using the microphone feature to place orders or ask for directions, and hear the translated words in a native speaker’s accent.

In addition to speech input, this new release of the Translator app now offers users the option to use the camera feature in both portrait and landscape mode. Simply point your camera, scan and translate printed language using your tablet or PC to create subtitles for everyday life. 

 
Today, we are also releasing new updates to the Bing Translator app for Windows Phone 8 which include improvements to the speech functionality for better quality and responsiveness of translations, in addition a redesigned user interface for the existing and recently released offline language packs. By downloading offline language packs, you can maintain translation on the go when not connected to the internet and avoid expensive data roaming charges.

You can now download the free app for Windows from the Windows store here and for the Windows Phone from the Windows Phone store here.  Existing users who have already downloaded the app, will be able to access the new updates without needing to download it again. Whether on your Windows Phone or any Windows device, the Translator app is the perfect travel companion to help overcome language barriers, even when there’s no internet connection. To learn more about Bing Translator apps, check out the Translator for Windows and the Translator for Windows Phone product pages.

These apps will become your window to the world, no matter where you are.

The post Say ‘Hello World!’ Announcing Speech Input for the Bing Translator app for Windows appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

Klingon^* is now a supported option on the Bing Translator site, allowing you to translate text snippets and web pages to and from Klingon.  Bing Translator for Windows Phone added Klingon as a supported language, for text mode input/output and camera mode output. On the Bing Translator site, you can also choose to translate to both Latin-script Klingon and to plqaD (the Klingon script). Please note that if you are translating from Klingon, you would need to explicitly select the language (rather than rely on Auto-detect).

This system has been built as a labor of love, in close partnership with members of the Klingon Language Institute (KLI) headed by Dr.Lawrence Schoen, Prof. Marc Okrand, the inventor of the Klingon language, many other Klingon enthusiasts inside and outside Microsoft. We received fantastic support from our fellow Star Trek fans at Paramount and CBS.

Building a new translation system from scratch is a challenging affair, requiring a large amount of training documents, many iterations of training the engine, reviewing and evaluating, and repeating this many times. What you initially get is mostly unintelligible, and with continued learning comes the improvement – both in vocabulary and in fluency. While there is a great amount of training material for such a system in mainstream languages like English, French or German, Klingon is a language that does not (yet!) have a comparable volume of “parallel” (translated) text, or even material in Klingon alone. Our friends in the community were able to help us gather what is available, and used the Microsoft Translator Hub to train the initial engine. Members of the community were then able to review, critique and correct the translation errors this infant system was making. These corrections directly influenced the next training run, and thus the system has been getting better every day. Given its infancy, and the distance it has yet to travel to achieve the necessary fluency and vocabulary – Klingon will stay as an experimental language in Bing Translator for the time being.

We wish to thank the Klingon language community, Prof.Okrand, Dr.Schoen and CBS/Paramount for helping make this a reality. If you are a Klingon speaker and wish to join the Hub community built around this effort, please email lawrence@kli.org or translator@microsoft.com. Not everyone can have Lieutenant Uhura translate for them, so we hope Bing Translator’s Klingon support comes handy next time you are in a pinch.

lupDujHomwIj lubuy’moH gharghmey

– Vikram Dendi & the Translator team at Microsoft

Update (2:52 PM): Added note about auto-detection, and other minor edits.

* Klingon is a trademark of CBS Studios Inc.

Here is a translated version of the original Klingon Empire Announcement:  

SIbI’ maqlu’

Immediately proclaimed  

DaH tlhIngan Hol mughlaH Bing Translator ‘e’ maq tlhIngan yejquv

The Klingon High Council announces that Bing Translator can now translate Klingon

tlhIngan Hol ‘oH qIb Hol wa’DIch’e’ mughlaHbogh Bing Translator ‘e’ maq tlhIngan yejquv, boqbogh tlhIngan Hol yejHaD, Microsoft je.

 Klingon is the first galactic language which can be translated by Bing Translator, announces the Klingon High Council, in alliance with the Klingon Language Institute and Microsoft.

qaStaHvIS DISmey, yuQjIjDIvI’ luSuchtaHvIS tlhInganpu”e’, Qatlhqu’ tlhIngan Hol mughmeH ‘ej tera’ Holmey mu’tlhegh lIngmeH Qu’, nuja’ tlhInganpu’. tera’ Holmey rurbe’chu’ tlhIngan Hol, ‘ej ‘oH HaDtaH tera’ngan law’. wejmaH tera’ Sep, Hoch puH’a’ je Dab HaDwI’pu’. qIb ghatlh tlhIngan Hol, tlhIngan tIgh je ‘e’ ‘agh ngoDvam.

For years, Klingons have told us that the task of translating Klingon and producing sentences in Earth languages while visiting the UFP is very difficult. Klingon is truly unlike Earth languages, and many Earthlings (continue to) study it. Students (of Klingon) live in thirty different Earth regions (countries) and all great landmasses. This fact demonstrates the galactic dominance of Klingon language and the Klingon Way.

tlhIngan Hol chelta’mo’ Bing Translator, qIb lengwI’vaD, tlhIngan wo’ SuchwI’vaD je nuH ‘ut mojbej mughwI’. Hoch SepDaq, tera’nganvaD tlhIngan Hol, tlhIngan tIgh je lIH Bing Translator mughmeH laHmey. pIj mughwI’ lo’chugh taghwI’, nom tlhIngan Hol pab pIn moj.

Because Bing Translator has added Klingon, the translator will certainly become and essential weapon (tool) for (the) galactic traveler and (the) visitor to the Klingon Empire. In every region (country), the translation abilities of Bing Translator will introduce Earthlings to the Klingon language and the Klingon Way (culture). If beginners frequently use the translator, they will quickly become grammarians of the Klingon language.

Qo’noS Qombogh muD, tuj’a’, Debmey tIn je SIQlaH tera’nganpu’. pIraQSIS Qaw’lu’mo’ choHpu’ Qo’noS ‘e’ leghlaH je. Bing Translator lo’taHvIS lengwI’, lengDI’ bel, ‘ej roD batlhHa’ vangbe’laH ‘ej tIgh chach junlaH. Microsoft Bing Translator, qum chaw’ je ghajchugh «SuvwI’ lengmey» lengwI’, tlhIngan SuvmeH tIgh ‘ut ghojlaH, qagh SoplaH ghopDu’Daj lo’taHvIS, ‘ej pIjHa’ QumHa’.

 Earthlings will be able to endure (experience) the quaking (turbulent) atmosphere, great heat and large deserts of Qo’noS. They will also be able to see that Qo’noS has changed due to the destruction of Praxis. While the traveler uses Bing Translator, he will be comfortable while travelling, and will usually be able to not act dishonorably and avoid cultural emergencies. With Microsoft Bing Translator and a government permit, “Warrior Tours” travelers can learn essential Klingon fighting, eat qagh with their hands and infrequently miscommunicate.

che’ronDaq mughwI’ mu’tlheghmey, mu’mey je tobta’ tlhIngan Hol yejHaD. jIjDI’ tlhIngan Hubbeq, ‘ejyo’ je, toy’beH mughwI’. ‘e’ poQbej SuvwI’ Hol. DaH not Hegh SuvwI’ «HIjol» mughHa’DI’ boq beq ‘ej «HIQoj» mojDI’. taHmeH tlhIngan wo”a’ HoSghaj, lI’chu’ Bing Translator mughmeH laHmey.

The Klingon Language Institute has tested the translator’s sentences and words on the battlefield. When the Klingon Defense Force and Starfleet cooperate, the translator will be ready to serve. A warrior language certainly requires that. Now warriors will never die when “Beam me up!” is mistranslated by an alliance crew and becomes “Beam me out!” In order that the powerful great Klingon Empire continue, the translation abilities of Bing Translator will be supremely useful.

pItlh.

The post Announcing Klingon for Bing Translator appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

With the proliferation of digital content on the web, mobile devices, and desktop applications, there is an increasing demand to communicate and collaborate in multiple languages. Helping enable business, communities, and consumers to communicate and collaborate across language barriers through technology innovation is a core focus for the Microsoft Translator team.

Today, I am pleased to announce the launch of two new officially supported languages: Malay and Urdu. These two languages join the other languages already supported by the Microsoft Translator platform and Bing Translator. Malay is spoken by over 200M people worldwide in countries ranging from Malaysia to Brunei. Urdu is spoken by over 100M people worldwide and is spoken by large populations residing in the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East and countries in Europe and North America. It is the national language of Pakistan and the official language of several states in India.

A year ago, on the last International Mother Language Day, we announced the release of Hmong as part of a close engagement between Microsoft and the Hmong community – a small but significant step towards empowering businesses and organizations to tap into the power of Microsoft’s language technology. Like Hmong, the development of Urdu is the result of a community effort shepherded by the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) under the leadership of Dr.Girish Nath Jha, and Microsoft, utilizing the powerful Microsoft Translator Hub customization tools.

In addition to the launch of these new languages; we are also rolling out several new improvements to our platform, customization tools, and language quality. See the release notes for this release in our forum here.

We have seen some great momentum with both the business and language communities for the Translator Hub. Through the Hub, users are able to bring better and specialized translation quality to established languages, as well as the many native languages of the world that are not yet supported by major translation providers which go to the core of supporting the goals of Mother Language Day. Urdu is the latest language community benefiting from the availability of the Hub.  If you are passionate about the community development efforts around Urdu or other languages that we support and want to become involved in the efforts, please contact us.

Commemorating the International Mother Language Day, Microsoft Local Language Program (LLP), also announced the support of 13 extra languages to our range of Language Interface Packs (LIPs), bringing the total number of languages supported by Windows 8 and Office to 108. Learn more at the LLP website.

– Vikram Dendi,
Director of Product Management,
Microsoft/Bing Translator

The post Celebrating International Mother Language Day with the Launch of New Languages & Features appeared first on Microsoft Translator Blog.

At X’Caret, the Mayan eco-archaeological park in Carmen Del playa, the Rector of the Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo, Professor Francisco Rosado-May and I along with Governor of Quintara Roo, Roberto Borge Angulo, unveiled the custom Mayan to Spanish translation system to demonstrate it to the community on December 21^st, 2012—a date that coincided with the end of the 13^th b’ak’tun and the beginning of the 14^th. A fitting beginning for the Mayan-Spanish translation system.

I mentioned what an honor it is in a Microsoft Research Connections blog to work with local communities to create new translation models. What is special about the Microsoft Translator Hub is that it enables this capability “at home” by putting the power of developing a translation system into the hands of the organizations that care about it the most—the communities themselves.

An organization’s small data can be combined with our big data for the major languages to aid in the training of a new system—keeping it in use for coming generations or as the Mayans say, b’ak’tun. This is incredibly important to culture and language preservation as Carlos Allende, Public Sector Director Microsoft México explains, “The Microsoft Translator Hub is Microsoft’s contribution to worldwide cultures. In Mexico we are proud that this incredible technology is displayed for celebrating the Mayan Katun for keeping this language alive and allowing the next generation to have access to this millenarian knowledge.”

It takes a great deal of effort to build a translation model between two languages. One of the features of the Microsoft Translator Hub is that one can do this directly—create a translation model between two languages without having to go through a “pivot” language (usually English). And this is what the local university, Universidad Intercultural Maya de Quintana Roo, has set out to do; to translate from Mayan to Spanish and vice versa.

The process began in May of this year when the Rector of the University, Professor Francisco Rosado-May, met with us at the LATAM Faculty Summit held in Cancun to discuss how it might be possible for his institution to work on Yucatec, a local Mayan dialect, as well as other related languages.

“The Translator Hub by Microsoft is not only a powerful software that facilitates the proper communication between Maya and Spanish but it is also a very important tool to achieve one of the strategic goals of our university: to preserve and increase the use of Maya,” said Professor Rosado-May who went on to explain the significance of language preservation, “Language is the genetic code of any culture, by understanding and using a lot more Maya, we also understand better the mental processes that trigger the construction of knowledge. In the case of Maya, that means understanding how they created sophisticated knowledge such as the zero, astronomy, mathematics, etc. This is why my University and I appreciate so much what Microsoft is doing with the Translator Hub.”

What is being unveiled today is a result of the hard work of linguistics professor, Martin Equival-Pat, his students, local language experts and the support of the local government agencies and Microsoft Mexico. Through their work the university has been able to build a Spanish to Yucatec and Yucatec to Spanish translation system that is just the beginning. As Rosado-May goes on to elaborate, “I expect that the hub will play an important role for the years to come in positioning the Maya language in the global world. We might be witnessing something special for the Baktuns ahead of us and contributing to one of the most important dreams all over the world: live in peace by understanding each other better, and recognizing that different cultures and different languages are important for peace.”

Microsoft Mexico fully supports this project and is comitted to the Mayan society. As Juan Alberto González Esparza, General Director Microsoft México explains, “Think for a moment of a situation where a Spanish speaker and a Maya person communicate with one another in their own languages using a computer or a phone. This is the world that Microsoft has imagined and now this is a reality thanks the Microsoft Translator HUB-Maya; that brings to the new age the Mayan language with all its culture, meanings, stories and lifestyle that will be preserved and available to everyone worldwide. This is the way we are generating a real impact in vulnerable communities connecting people with the potential of our technology.”

As we entered into the 14^th b’ak’tun on December 22^nd energized and engaged; the possibilities for the impact of the Hub and the impact of language preservation throughout the world are limitless.

– Kristin Tolle
Director, Natural User Interactions Team
Microsoft Research Connections

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