Skype Translator Speaks Russian Now

Microsoft announced a major update to the Skype Translator functionality that’s built into its Skype communications products: Now, you can translate spoken words between Russian and other supported languages in real time.

“Here at Skype, we are passionate about breaking down barriers,” the Skype team writes in a new post to its Garage & Updates blog. “Whether it be communicating with loved ones at a distance, solving problems in real time, or speaking to someone in an entirely different language, we love bringing people together in new ways.”

As you may know, Skype supports two types of language translations services: It can translate written text between over 50 languages. And it can now translate spoken text between 8 languages: Arabic, English, Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazilian), Spanish, and now Russian. This latter capability is exactly as exciting as it sounds: As people speak naturally in their own language, the speech is translated to the language of the other person in the conversation.

“Russian is the eighth most popular spoken language in the world and our Russian-speaking customers around the world have always been particularly enthusiastic about Skype Translator,” the Skype team explains. “For months, we’ve received many requests to include Russian in Skype Translator’s audio language portfolio and we are excited to finally cross this milestone, opening up one of the most dialectically complex languages on earth to anyone with a Skype account.”

Like other machine learning technologies, Skype Translator gets better as its used more often, so the quality of the translations keeps going up. If you’d like to test spoken Russian translations, or any other supported real time spoken language translation, open a message window in Skype for Windows desktop and then click the Skype Translator (globe) button.