Microsoft Edge will soon support real-time video translation on several platforms, the company announced on Tuesday (May 21). The announcement comes just a day after the company unveiled its Copilot+ computers, which are also capable of translating pre-recorded as well as live video in real time. By leveraging generative artificial intelligence, Microsoft says the upcoming feature can not only translate subtitles on Microsoft Edge, but also dub videos in the viewer’s native language—all in real time.
According to the official blog post, the real-time video translation feature will be able to translate spoken content in the form of descriptions as well as dubbing. Its goal is to make videos accessible to a wider range of people, especially people with disabilities. Microsoft says the feature can currently translate English to five languages - Hindi, German, Spanish, Russian and Italian. Furthermore, it can also translate Spanish to English.
The real-time video translation feature can also translate videos on platforms such as YouTube, Coursera, and LinkedIn. News websites such as CNBC, Reuters, MoneyControl and Bloomberg will also support the feature. According to Microsoft, content translation happens on the device with no cloud processing involved, meaning “no segment of video or audio content ever leaves the machine.”
An unlisted YouTube video from the official Microsoft Edge channel gives a glimpse of how this feature might work. First use will include installation of Edge’s language translation model. Then a new Translate Video option will appear at the top of the video. Users can select the language the video is in, with options such as English, German, Spanish, Italian, Hindi, and Russian, and then select the output language.
Then you will be offered a choice – whether you want to provide subtitles or audio. The subtitle option will enable subtitles in the selected language, while selecting the audio option will offer to sync the video, after a few seconds of processing. While the exact timeline for the introduction of the video translation feature has not been announced, Microsoft says that it will soon add support for multiple languages as well as websites.
