Instant messaging has gone multilingual, with Microsoft making an automatic translation plug-in available for its unified communications platform, Lync
The service, launched earlier this month, can translate incoming and outgoing messages into 35 different languages in real-time.
Lync’s senior test engineer, Lin Li, said the social add-on is the first of many to be rolled out by Microsoft.
“Global economic development brings language diversity and translation to the forefront, and as worldwide communication becomes more commonplace we’ll have more opportunities to offer solutions to our customers to help them address language barriers,” Li said in a statement.
“So this translation feature – not only in Lync but across our products – will become more and more important.”
The service is powered by the translation service of Microsoft's search engine, Bing.
Lync was rolled out last year in Australia, with Jetstar deploying the platform across 500 seats.
The announcement comes on the back on Microsoft’s purchase of Skype last month, which the company said would be integrated into the Microsoft Lync platform.