Microsoft Teams can now make you a foreign language expert without even trying
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Mastering international contacts during a Microsoft Teams call should soon be much easier thanks to a new update.
The video conferencing platform has confirmed that users can now activate live translated subtitles in several languages.
When initiating and setting up a conversation, Microsoft Teams users can select live captions in the language of their choice, giving them a better understanding with other participants.
Live Captions from Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams, which was first announced in August 2022, hopes the update will allow for more engagement in conversations between teams or colleagues in different countries.
“This will help users fully participate in meetings where the spoken language may not be the most comfortable language to use,” the company noted.
In his entry on the official Microsoft 365 roadmap (opens in new tab), the company notes that the change is due to the assistance of Microsoft Cognitive Service Speech Translation Capabilities. As part of the company’s Azure cloud platform, Microsoft says its tools provide powerful and fast translation services in real time.
The tool is now rolling out to Microsoft Teams desktop users around the world.
The news is the latest in a series of upgrades to Microsoft Teams as the company strives to make the platform more useful to users around the world.
This includes the recent announcements about so-called “intelligent translation” for Microsoft Teams Mobile users, which means that mobile users can quickly translate messages into a foreign language, so there are never any delays or errors.
Another step in early 2022 meant that Microsoft Teams also gained access to a large network of professional interpreters who dial in to meetings on demand. Once a session has started, Microsoft Teams users can switch between the original audio feed and the interpreter’s translation via a drop-down menu.
And what may come as a relief to many, users can now track down entire chat conversation threads after clicking on the results of a search message.
The update means that when users search for a chat message in Teams and click on a message result, they will be taken to a view that contains the entire thread of the desired message, rather than just a single line of text as was the case. .