Historically, languages – or a lack of them – have been one of the main barriers to companies and entrepreneurs taking the leap to expand across borders.
But, as algorithms have become more sophisticated and the data sets on which they train more numerous, automatic machine translation – particularly for the world’s top 10 spoken languages – has become far more accurate and reliable for human use.
In this #TechTalk, Mark Lange talks to Chris Wendt, who leads the program management team responsible for Microsoft Translator services, about the potential of machine translation for businesses to expand their reach and networks to other countries. They discuss Microsoft’s commitment of bringing all 24 EU languages up to a similar quality level to facilitate interpersonal communication between people speaking different languages. A true Single Market, without language barriers, is closer to becoming a reality with current technology innovation. They also discuss the social and cultural benefits of machine translation, for example how it can improve communication in the classroom between teachers and newly arrived non-native students.
And finally, Chris stresses that the demand for human and machine translation services is booming, in part because people and businesses across the world are becoming more and more connected. As such, human translation services are experiencing unusual growth which is expected to last years to come.
Learn more about the latest breakthroughs in Machine Translation research on our Translator Blog and learn more about Microsoft Translator here.