Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business

#Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business upgrade
#Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business software

ItвЂ™s worth noting that my testing conditions werenвЂ™t ideal. IвЂ™ve been informed anecdotally that Skype Translator works much better if the Spanish-speaker is from Latin America, rather than Spain, and prefers West Coast American accents even to British RP. This is, once again, likely a regional accent problem. My second call with someone speaking English with a Received Pronunciation (RP) accent went much better from the English side, but faltered on the Spanish.

#Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business software

However, as soon as we tried to get down to the main topic of conversation вЂ“ vacuum cleaners вЂ“ we hit a roadblock, as the software was unable to understand what was being said in English. My attempt to talk with someone who has a fairly strong East London accent started off ok, and we were able to exchange pleasantries initially. However, I was able to establish successful calls with two other co-testers, with varying results. We tried multiple times, but either one side wouldnвЂ™t recognise there was a call incoming, or if it did and we hit answer, the other side wouldnвЂ™t recognise that the call had been answered. Despite being in the same building, we were unable to establish a connection between the two accounts. Once we changed the settings so I it knew I was speaking Spanish, things actually got worse. Consequently, our first attempt at voice translation went horribly, horribly wrong. Once again, the fact that you have to choose your partnerвЂ™s language rather than your own also led to confusion, as my co-tester didnвЂ™t realise he needed to change my spoken language.

This wasnвЂ™t ideal as, while my initial co-tester and I both speak Spanish, neither is a native speaker, which isnвЂ™t ideal when trying to test the accuracy of translation software. While the delay may only be around ten seconds at a time, it makes for an unnatural experience and over the course of a whole conversation means a lot of time is spent, effectively, in silence.ДЄt the time of testing, the only spoken languages available were English and Spanish, although Mandarin and Italian have since been added.

One person speaks, both wait for the translation to come through, then the other person replies. One of the most frustrating elements is the stiltedness of the conversation. Simultaneous voice translation is SkypeвЂ™s main selling point, but itвЂ™s still very rickety. In short, the while the IM function is quicker, in that you donвЂ™t have to flick between two pieces of software, itвЂ™s no more accurate than using Google Translate or similar services, which is disappointing for a flagship translator. We would assume the same problem would also affect animate/inanimate languages like Basque, although we havenвЂ™t been able to test this hypothesis. While this might not seem like a big deal to us, you would have hoped that such supposedly advanced software would be able to analyse the preceding message and determine if вЂњitвЂќ is masculine or feminine to prevent simple grammatical mistakes such as this. This causes particular problems with gendered languages, like French and Spanish, as feminine nouns ( la chaise, la comunidad) will be referred to with a masculine pronoun in the second sentence if you use вЂњitвЂќ. Similarly, Skype Translator is unable to keep up with a conversation where the user is either typing in disjointed sentences or refers to something in the preceding sentence or message with вЂњitвЂќ вЂ“ as is normal in IM conversations. Idioms tend to have a set translation, so this should have been one of the easiest things to program into the software. This has been a long-term problem for consumer text translation software, but you would have hoped that Microsoft would have taken the time to iron this out. In fact, it doesnвЂ™t like idioms or colloquialisms at all, and will tend to give a literal and consequently nonsensical translation. We canвЂ™t actually reprint how it translated my co-testerвЂ™s opener вЂ“ it was that bad вЂ“ but at least gave us a bit of a laugh.

#Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business software

#Microsoft skype translator and its benefits for business upgrade