{"id":108,"date":"2012-04-18T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T16:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.technet.microsoft.com\/inside_microsoft_research\/2012\/04\/18\/research-bolsters-windows-phone-translation\/"},"modified":"2016-07-20T07:32:58","modified_gmt":"2016-07-20T14:32:58","slug":"research-bolsters-windows-phone-translation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.microsoft.com\/en-us\/research\/blog\/research-bolsters-windows-phone-translation\/","title":{"rendered":"Research Bolsters Windows Phone Translation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by Rob Knies<\/span><\/p>\n

 \"Translator (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Eager for foreign travel but worried about foreign languages? Fear no more, thanks to the Translator App for Windows Phone (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, updated April 16 and featuring several contributions from Microsoft Research.<\/p>\n

The app, powered by the same state-of-the-art technology used in Bing Translator (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, and available for free download (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> on Windows Phone Marketplace, enables a new travel experience by offering a variety of machine-translation scenarios certain to please the nascent globetrotter. With the app, users can translate street signs, posters, train schedules, and menus simply by pointing and scanning with their phone’s camera; download highly optimized, compressed language packs to get translation assistance while avoiding huge data-connection bills; use keyboard input to gain instant translations, some of them featuring spoken playback; and, in German, French, Italian, Spanish, and both U.S. and U.K. English, tap an icon, speak, then tap again for a translation.<\/p>\n

The translation aspects of the app, notes Vikram Dendi (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, director of product strategy for Microsoft Research Redmond (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>’s Machine Translation (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> team, depend on two things: the Microsoft Translator web service, used by such entities as Bing (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Office (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, Internet Explorer (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, and Facebook; and a highly compressed and optimized version of the translation engine that uses downloadable language packs.<\/p>\n

“The new Translator app,” Dendi says, “takes advantage of Windows Phone’s unique features to deliver a great translation experience, enabling you to go to new places with confidence.”<\/p>\n

The research included cross-lab collaboration between researchers from Microsoft Research’s Redmond and Microsoft Research Asia (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, including members of the Machine Translation and Natural Language Processing (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> groups, as well as Speech groups based in both Redmond (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a> and Beijing (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Chris Wendt (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>, principal group program manager for the Machine Translation group, cites three significant Microsoft Research contributions to the new version of the Translator App:<\/p>\n