Microsoft gets you speaking Mandarin in one hour

Microsoft Research
Pulling faces – you could soon see yourself speaking in tongues

Microsoft Research is working on a project that will let users translate their own voice into other languages.

During a demonstration at Microsoft's Redmond campus, research scientist Frank Soong showed off the translation skills of the new software which could see Star Trek's Universal Translator become reality.

In the demo he translated the voice Microsoft Research's Rick Rashid into Spanish, Italian and Mandarin Chinese.

Soong said: "for a monolingual speaker traveling in a foreign country, we'll do speech recognition followed by translation, followed by the final text to speech output [in] a different language, but still in his own voice."

Learn Mandarin by mimicking your Chinese self

The software could help learn a new language by providing foreign phrases in a user's own voice. This could make the phrases easier to imitate and generally encourage progress.

During the demonstration Soong also showed the system's possible applications for navigation as a stock English synthetic voice read out Chinese road signs in Beijing route instructions.

To translate a person's own voice into a different language the system needs roughly an hour of training. After that it tweaks the individual voice sounds to allow it to accurately produce phrases in other languages.

The system can convert between 26 different languages and mean there's soon even less incentive for native English speakers to learn another language.

From Microsoft Research via MIT Technology Review, The Verge

TOPICS
Latest in Tech
Apple iPhone 16e
Which affordable phone wins the mid-range race: the iPhone 16e, Nothing 3a, or Samsung Galaxy A56? Our latest podcast tells all
The Apple MacBook Air next to the Dyson Supersonic R and new AMD GPU
ICYMI: the week's 7 biggest tech stories from the best tech at MWC to Apple's new iPads and MacBooks
A triptych image featuring the Bose Solo Soundbar 2, Nothing Phone 3a Pro and the Panasonic Lumix S1R II.
5 trailblazing tech reviews of the week: Nothing's stylish, affordable flagship and why you should buy AMD's new graphics card over Nvidia's
The best tech of MWC 2025 examples, including the Nothing Phone 3a Pro, the Nubia Flip 2, and the Lenovo Solar PC
Best of MWC 2025: the 10 top tech launches we tried on the show floor
Toy Fair 2025 Primal Hatch
The 7 best toys we saw at Toy Fair 2025, from a Lego boat to a hatching, robotic dinosaur
ICYMI
ICYMI: the 7 biggest tech stories of the week, from a next-gen Alexa to the new iPhone 16e
Latest in News
Lilo & Stitch Official Trailer
Stitch crashes into earth and steals our hearts with the first trailer for the live-action Lilo & Stitch
GTA 5
GTA Online publisher Take-Two is gunning for a black market that’s basically heaven for cheaters
Y2K cast looking shocked
Y2K has a streaming release date on Max, so you can witness the technology uprising at home
The Discovery+ homepage
Discovery+ just got a big update to its streaming app that makes it more like Max – here are 5 great new features to try
Two Android phones on a green and blue background showing Google Messages
Struggling with slow Google Messages photo transfers? Google says new update will make 'noticeable difference'
China
Chinese hackers targeting Juniper Networks routers, so patch now