A new add-on has added real-time translating capability to Microsoft Teams video calls, narrowing the gap with competitor company Zoom.
The service is provided by Interprefy, a business that was asked to incorporate its cloud-based translation solution into Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft clients now have accessibility to Interprefy’s community of expert translators, who can dial into meetings on demand. Once a meeting has commenced, participants can utilize a drop-down menu to toggle between both the original recording feed and the translator’s translation.
Zoom announced the purchase of live translation company Kites GmbH in June this year, which has been recruited to assist create machine translation (MT) services that’d enable users to connect in real-time with coworkers from all around the globe.
“We are constantly exploring for new methods to offer satisfaction to our users and enhance meeting efficiency, and MT solutions will be critical in strengthening our platform for Zoom customers worldwide,” Zoom’s President of Product and Engineering, stated.
Even though this ideal still has to be realized, Zoom has always provided the opportunity for human translators to dial into meetings through a function named Simultaneous Interpretations.
Microsoft which is known for Office 365 had previously been unable to provide both machine or human interpretation, but the inclusion of Interprefy into the Microsoft Teams platform will address this need in place of a first-party option.
“We’re happy to have worked together with Microsoft to deliver Interprefy’s multilingual meeting experience to Microsoft Teams customers globally,” says Interprefy CEO. “This is a significant step in expanding the inclusiveness and availability of international meetings in order to promote cross-cultural collaborative efforts.”
Alternatively, but in a similar spirit, Microsoft known for products like SharePoint stated earlier this week that it will expand the availability of its live captioning function to a broader range of customers in an attempt to boost accessibility standards.
The Teams live captioning function, which was launched shortly after the transition to remote working as a consequence of the epidemic, is intended to ensure that all video meeting attendees can properly follow the stream of discourse.
Until recently, access to the live captioning function was restricted behind a registration barrier. In other terms, if a person joined a meeting as a visitor using a link supplied by the host, they would have been unable to use the accessibility function. It’ll no longer be a problem, according to an upgrade scheduled by the end of April this year.
