Microsoft Translator for Education
Breaking language and communication barriers
Schools are increasingly diverse. Teachers manage many types of learners, including students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) who require assistive technology, and language learners who may not speak or understand the language of the classroom well.
A diverse student body includes family members too, who may not share a language with teachers or school staff, making school enrollment, teacher-parent conferences, and conversations with school staff a challenge.
Microsoft Translator helps bridge these communication gaps, supporting accessible classroom learning with live captioning, cross-language understanding, and even multilingual casual conversations to help with student integration.
Presentation Translator for PowerPoint
Presentation Translator is a PowerPoint add-in for Windows that provides live transcripts of a teacher’s lectures in many languages including English. These subtitles enable deaf, hard of hearing students, and language learners to follow and participate in group discussions using a personal computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone.
Presentation Translator can also learn and adapt to the speaker’s vocabulary – such as the technical terminology associated with a specific subject area (such as chemistry or history) – which improves the quality of the speech recognition. This can be done automatically using the content of the slides and slide notes. This feature is available for all of our supported speech conversation languages. To see if your language is supported, visit the languages page.
Classroom conversations: students who are DHH and language learners
By using the Microsoft Translator live feature, students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) can follow live, classroom conversations by reading discussion transcripts. Students can also ask questions from their own device by pressing the microphone button or typing into the conversation window.
Language learning students can ask questions in their language by speaking or typing, and can follow classroom discussions by receiving transcripts in their own language.
Students see all comments in their native language and can also see them simultaneously in the language of the classroom. Bilingual transcripts aid student language learning and comprehension.
Microsoft Translator for Education: Communicate with Students
Learn how Microsoft Translator can be used to help teachers better communicate with students who are non-native speakers, deaf or hard of hearing, dyslexic, or having trouble taking notes.
Microsoft Translator for Education: Parent-Teacher Conferences
Learn how Microsoft Translator can be used to engage parents with their children's teachers and school community by providing real-time language translation for parent-teacher conferences.
Chinook Middle School
With students from all over the world, the Bellevue School District is an incredibly diverse district. More than 80 languages are spoken, with over 30% of students speaking a first language other than English. A diverse student body includes family members too, who may not share a language with teachers or school staff, making school enrollment, teacher-parent conferences, meetings, and conversations with school staff a challenge. Watch how Chinook Middle School is using Microsoft Translator to allow faculty and staff to better engage with their student, parent, and family communities, marking them a part of the conversation.
READ THE FULL STORYRIT levels the playing field with AI for students who are deaf and hard of hearing
The distinguished Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, New York, is renowned for graduating successful professionals who are deaf and hard of hearing. They account for 8.8 percent of the school’s nearly 19,000 students. To best serve them, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf was established at RIT in 1967. Learn how dedicated researchers—many of them deaf themselves—are working with Microsoft, using artificial intelligence and Microsoft Cognitive Services to develop a custom automatic speech recognition solution, making the world more accessible and inclusive for all students.
READ THE FULL STORY
Download the app
Learn about all the features, which languages are supported, and download the app on your phone or Windows desktop.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE APP
Download Presentation Translator for PowerPoint
Learn about Presentation Translator's features and download it directly on your PC (Windows only).
VISIT THE PRESENTATION TRANSLATOR PAGE
Education resources
Download parent-teacher conference letters and Translator how-to guides.
VISIT THE EDUCATION RESOURCES PAGE| Brand | Good for noisy environments | Good for long distance transmission |
|---|---|---|
| Jabra 930 | Yes | Yes, up to 300 feet/90 meters |
| Jabra Stealth | Yes, but more susceptible to noise than the Jabra 930 | Yes, up to 30 feet/9 meters |
| JPL-Element-X500 | Yes | Yes, up to 300 feet/90 meters |
| Mpow Jaws V4.1 Bluetooth Headphones Wireless Neckband | No | No. Distance limited to 10 feet/3 meters. Above this distance, signal can drop |
| Mpow Pro Trucker Bluetooth Headset | Better than Mpow Jaws; not as good as Jabras | No. Distance limited to 10 feet/3 meters. Above this distance, signal can drop |
| Roger SF Touchscreen Mic and Roger Digimaster X. Download the Phonak set-up instructions here | Yes | Yes, up to 60 feet/18 meters |
| Skype-approved list of microphones |
Microsoft Translator in the Classroom
In July 2017, a group of Chinese students visiting from the University of Washington stopped by the Microsoft AI and Research offices to learn about Microsoft Translator’s speech translation technology.
Microsoft Translator live feature in action
The Microsoft Translator live feature transforms your favorite device into your own personal universal translator where you can have real conversations with people across different languages. In this demo video, English, French, and German are spoken and translated into Italian speech and text.
Presentation Translator in action
For this demo, English is the chosen speech and captioned language - highlighting the use of live captioning for the deaf or hard of hearing community. Users could also join and participate in other languages (not shown in this video).
Get started with Presentation Translator
Presentation Translator subtitles your live presentation straight from PowerPoint, and lets your audience join from their own devices using the Translator app or browser.
Presentation Translator for PowerPoint
Subtitle your live presentation straight from PowerPoint, and let your audience join from their own device using the Translator app or browser.
LEARN MORE
Translator app
Students can follow along with Presentation Translator in their own language and language learners can have one-on-one translated conversations with teachers using the app.
LEARN MORE
Translator for Education resources
Download translated parent-teacher conference letters and how-to guides.
EDUCATION RESOURCES PAGE
Translator Help and FAQs
Search FAQs to troubleshoot questions about the Translator live feature and Presentation Translator.
TRANSLATOR HELP PAGE
Translator languages
Want to know what features are supported for your chosen language? Visit our languages page.
TRANSLATOR LANGUAGES PAGE
Translator blog
Check out the latest news and stories from Microsoft Translator.
TRANSLATOR BLOG
