The world has become a little smaller with the completion of Skype's automatic translation feature as it rolls out to all users of the Windows desktop version of the program.
This roll out has taken just over three months to wrap up and brings the ability to automatically translate seven spoken languages that include Chinese Mandarin, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
In addition, automatic text too text translation in Skype can be done for over 50 languages using the software's IM features. See this page for a full list of supported languages.
This has been a project that has been in the public eye since December of 2014 with the release of the first public preview of the translation service and I got to try it out last April and it was very impressive at that point.
Over the ensuing months the preview was expanded and now we have the completed roll out.
To activate the translator feature for a contact on Skype just open up a conversation window with them and look for the globe on the right side of the window just below the call buttons.
Click that globe and it will open up a dialog box where you can turn on automatic translations for this contact.
Next click on the language next to each contact and select the default for each participant.
Once this setup process is done for a contact it does not need to be repeated.
