Microsoft Translator for group chats coming “by the end of the year,” will support up to nine languages

Microsoft Translator, the company’s automatic translation technology, has become ubiquitous today. The service is available as a dedicated app on iOS, Android, and Windows 10 devices (there is also an Edge extension for Windows 10 PCs), but it also powers translations in other apps and services including Office, Bing, and Skype.

On mobile devices, one of the most impressive features of the Microsoft Translator app is its ability to translate conversations involving two speakers in real-time. However, according to a new report from ZDNet the company is currently working on a new mobile app that will offer live translation of multi-lingual conversations between a group of speakers.

The company demoed a prototype of this app today at the Microsoft Future Decoded event in London. The demo featured three people speaking a different language (French, English, and German) and getting real-time translations of what the others were saying in written text through the app running on a phone. According to the report, the speech recognition wasn’t 100% accurate during the demo but that is too be expected in such environments.

The company said during the event that it is currently working to support translations between nine spoken languages as well as text translations for 60 languages. A preview of the service is expected to be available on mobile devices and web browsers by the end of the year, we’ll let you know as soon as we learn more about it.