🔊How to use Language Interpretation in Microsoft Teams [Real-Time Translation]

[Giuliano De Luca]

NEW VIDEO N. 259

Language interpretation will allow interpreters to convert what the speaker says into another language in real-time without disrupting the original flow of delivery of the speaker. This will allow more inclusive meetings, where participants who may not speak the same language can fully collaborate with each other.

[#2]

@Giuliano De Luca Is there a way to turn off the main speaker audio so that the audience who selected the interpretation does not hear both speaker and interpreter at the same time? It's kind of confusing to hear 2 people talking at the same time.

[#3]

The speaker can mute himself/herself giving the time to the interpreter to deliver the translation, however for my opinion speaker and interpreters should be synchronized like in the real in presence translation.
The speaker star to talk for 1 minute for example and then he/she waits that the interpreters finish to talk and to translate to start talking again.

[#4]

As we are doing a real time interview, the speakers would not be able to pause for the interpreters to finish talking. The speakers are also unable to hear the interpreters so it would be a guessing game for them to know when to continue talking. It would be good to have the feature to mute the speakers for everyone except the interpreters. The audience can just select the audio track they need.

[#5]

I don't know if you already started to use this feature, but the interpreter audio is set to be louder than the speaker audio.
In any case I got your point of view and I think this is good feedback to improve the feature.

[#6]

@Giuliano De Luca 

Language interpretation as implemented in Teams is only useful in 1 direction, much like an ASL interpreter at a political speach.  Many real world scenarios require the interpreter to translate "both ways".  For example, a non-english speaking person at a court hearing.  They need to hear the interpreter, but then the interpreter needs to translate back to the court magistrate what the non-English speaker is saying.  A potential workaround for this is to set up more than one interpreting "Language" channels for the Teams session.  One channel would be selected by the non-English speaker and the other channel by the magistrate.  The single interpreter would need the ability to switch language interpretation roles while in the live session.  Live switching of roles would need to be added as a feature.

[#7]

Really poor implementation.

Cannot add an external interpreter when scheduling the meeting, can only assign the role to internal users. The interpreters are usually hired to an external company. Most of the interpreters doesn't even have a Microsoft account. So you need to add someone random in your company to the meeting, assign as interpreter and then, when you are live, retire the interpreter role and assign to the real interpreter.

It's not bi-directional, doesn't even thing about relay simultaneous interpretation for multilanguage session. So completely useless for meetings, only valid for webinars and even in that case, it will force the panelists to speak all of them the same language.

Can only record the original sound, not the interpretation. If a meeting is relevant enough to be simultaneous translated, it probably will be relevant enough to be recorded for attendees that can not join live.

Performance is... well, it's just Teams, you know.

Many, many, many work ahead to do, too far to other solutions as Zoom or even Mashme.