Skype Translator begins official rollout

In June of this year Microsoft announced that the Windows desktop version of Skype would be receiving an update that would implement spoken and text translation throughout the program.

These services, which have been in preview since December 2014, have slowly been expanding to build up its collection of languages that can be translated in both spoken and written words over the last 10 months.

That list now includes six spoken and 50 messaging languages that can be translated on Skype.

Spoken languages that can be translated in real time include English, French, German, Italian, Mandarin and Spanish. The entire list of 50 written languages available through Skype can be seen on the Skype FAQ page.

I had a chance to try the spoken Italian translation service earlier this year and was really impressed with how well it worked. Microsoft's investment in machine learning and big data have been key to these services development and their capabilities.

Those efforts are now paying off as the new features are rolling out to all Skype desktop users on Windows 7, 8 and 10. According to Microsoft the process will take the next few weeks to reach everyone.

So how will you know you can now use these features? First you should receive an update to the Skype program itself and then the appearance of these two new Skype Translator icons in the messaging window indicate the services are available to your system:

Now, I did get an update to my desktop Skype program this morning shortly after reading about this roll out. I thought I had gotten in on the early part of the availability but alas it did not deliver the translator features.

I guess there is still some waiting to do.

But, wait...there's probably more so be sure to follow me on Twitter and Google+.