New features include a customized phrasebook to which users can upload their organization’s phrases and terminology. The app is also now accessible in 35 countries outside the US, including Australia, the UAE, Japan, Hong Kong, India, and throughout the European Union.
The app translates only language pairs that include spoken English. When connected to the internet, the app supports more than 100 languages, including 21 variants of Spanish and 16 variants of Arabic. Offline, however, the list of supported languages is much more limited: Mandarin (Simplified), French (France), German (Germany), Italian (Italy), Japanese, Russian, and Spanish (Mexico).
Generally Available but not Really Generally Available
Microsoft can approve qualified applicants who submit a “gating form” for organizational access to a paid version of the Microsoft Translator Pro app.
Of course, the app runs on Microsoft’s Azure cloud. Android users are out of luck, though, as Pro only runs on iOS devices (with iOS 15 or a newer version). The organization must also have a valid Azure Subscription ID.
Applicants are asked to describe their business use case(s); to estimate their weekly usage, in hours; and to estimate how many devices will use the app. Interestingly, they must also confirm that the application is for their own organization, and not on behalf of a client — possibly a subtle nod to language service providers (LSPs) who manage translation for companies that choose to outsource it.
According to Microsoft, the company does not retain users’ data from real-time speech-to-speech translation for model improvement. Users, however, can access data generated by the app, within their organization’s subscription, for their own analysis.
Microsoft describes its approach to translation quality management as “structured and ongoing.” During model fine-tuning, teams reportedly use BLEU and ChrF scores “to identify potential release candidates.” And just before a final release, Microsoft uses COMET scores, which it says “closely mirror human evaluations.”
