Microsoft Translator with watch

Microsoft Translator now brings your smartwatch into the conversation

Life
Image: Microsoft

18 December 2015

Translation apps are useful in two key ways: interpreting an unfamiliar foreign phrase in your native language, or else quickly translating your speech into another language as part of a conversation. The latter feature is now part of Microsoft Translator for both iOS and Android, Microsoft said Thursday – and powered by smartwatches, too.

Microsoft incorporated smartwatches into its Android Microsoft Translator app earlier this year, allowing users to dictate a phrase into the smartwatch mic, then display the results on the phone. The updated version of the app for Android and iOS takes this a step further, allowing back and forth conversation: One person can speak into the phone, and the translation appears on the smartwatch, and vice versa. Microsoft says these conversational features will work for Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. The same translation engine powers Skype’s new automatic translation feature, which also includes Portuguese.

If the user lacks a smartwatch, he or she can still use the new app – two people can share a phone – but the display will be split in half so that both sides can see the screen at the same time.

Microsoft says that the device-to-device translation allows you to have a more comfortable and fluid translated conversation, free from background noise and without the need to huddle around a phone. That’s probably true. Just keep in mind that if you do hand your phone to a stranger, while holding on to your watch, there’s always the risk of theft.

IDG News Service

 

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