Microsoft Translator now does English - Chinese as well as humans

[Brandon]

If you've been relying on Google for translation, you may want to give Microsoft / Bing translator another go:  in recent years it has been using neural networks, AI, and machine learning to not only catch up to google, but for certain language pairs, actually beating out the big "G."

 

Just this week a member of this forum from Mexico and I used Microsoft's "Translator Conversations" feature to instant message with each other, in two different languages, while each seeing the other's messages in our preferred one!  (I have previously tested this chat feature with up to 4 people, none of whom knew any second language--microsoft does all the bridgework to cross the language barrier!)

 

And today they announced their Chinese - English machine translation has now reached parity with human translators--wow!

 

They've also partnered with smartphone maker Huawei, which makes a phone with a built-in AI-dedicated computer chip which allows offline translation that rivals the power of google's supercomputers. It's almost like a star trek-type universal translator that doesn't even need internet access. This could be useful for need-greaters I imagine.

 

As lifehacker put it a year ago when they reviewed these two options side by side, "Google Offers More Languages, But Microsoft Chooses Quality Over Quantity"

 

Microsoft Translator is available at Bing.com/translator and in the mobile apps for iOS and Android.