Schools are increasingly diverse. Teachers manage many types of learners, including students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) who require assistive technology, and language learners who may not speak or understand the language of the classroom well.
A diverse student body includes family members too, who may not share a language with teachers or school staff, making school enrollment, teacher-parent conferences, and conversations with school staff a challenge.
Microsoft Translator helps bridge these communication gaps, supporting accessible classroom learning with live captioning, cross-language understanding, and even multilingual casual conversations to help with student integration.
Rochester Institute of Technology empowers students who are deaf with AI real-time captions
Rochester Institute of Technology empowers students who are deaf with AI real-time captions
Live Transcription & Translation
Presentations: Add live captions to PowerPoint Presentations (Windows only)
Presentation Translator provides live transcripts of a teacher’s lectures in many languages including English. These subtitles enable people deaf, hard of hearing students, and language learners to follow and participate in group discussions using a personal computer, laptop, tablet or smart phone.
Presentation Translator can also learn and adapt to the speaker’s vocabulary – such as the technical terminology associated with a specific subject area (such as chemistry or history) – which improves the quality of the speech recognition. This can be done automatically using the content of the slides and slide notes. Currently, this feature supports English and Chinese only.
Tip: to enable terminology adaptation, customize your presentation 5 minutes prior to the discussion, as outlined below. This will ensure that you are ready to go when you start your class or lecture.
For Teachers: How To Create Live Subtitles
Click the button below to install Presentation Translator (Windows only)
Open the PowerPoint deck to be presented
Click on the Slide Show tab
Click Start Subtitles
To enable adaptation to the content of the slides, click the box next to ‘Customize speech recognition’ (below, circled in orange)
To enable Q&A mode, click on the title bar Settings menu and click “unmute audience”.
Join a conversation by entering the conversation code or scanning the conversation’s QR code
Choose a language and enter the conversation.
Join the discussion by pressing the microphone icon (below, circled in orange) and speaking, or by typing directly into the text box. Translator automatically translates all comments into the user’s language – even if other users are speaking in a different language.
Please note that the student will not be able to speak or type from their device until the teacher un-mutes the audience.
Classroom Conversations: Language Learners & Students who are DHH
By using the Microsoft Translator live feature, students who are deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) can follow live, classroom conversations by reading discussion transcripts. Students can also ask questions from their own device by pressing the microphone button or typing into the conversation window. Conversations may be saved for later reference.
Similarly, language learning students can follow classroom discussions by receiving transcripts in their own language. They can also ask questions in their language by pressing the microphone button on a smart device to speak, or by typing their question in the conversation window.
Students see all comments in their native language and can also see them simultaneously in the language of the classroom. Bilingual transcripts aid student language learning and comprehension. Conversations may be saved for later reference.
Videos
Microsoft Translator live feature
At Chinook Middle School in Bellevue, Washington, Mr. Russell White - Chinook's principal – uses Microsoft Translator to communicate with parents who speak multiple languages. Using the Translator live feature and the Presentation Translator PowerPoint add-in, he’s able to speak in English while parents follow along on their own device, in their chosen language. Check out this video produced by Microsoft Education highlighting how Chinook Middle School is fostering an open, multilingual dialog with parents from around the world.
Want to have real conversations with people across different languages even if you can’t speak their language? With the Microsoft Translator live feature, your device becomes your own personal universal translator. Check out our Get Started video to start using the app.
In this demo video, English, French, and German are spoken and translated into Italian speech and text. Microsoft Translator supports many more languages than just those three! Visit http://translate.it to learn more.
Presentation Translator for PowerPoint
In July 2017, a group of Chinese students visiting from the University of Washington stopped by the Microsoft AI and Research offices to learn about Microsoft Translator’s speech translation technology.
Presentation Translator in Action
For this demo, English is the chosen speech and captioned language - highlighting the use of live captioning for the deaf or hard of hearing community. Users could also join and participate in other languages (not shown in this video).
Get started with Presentation Translator
Learn how to get started with Presentation Translator, an Office add-in for PowerPoint that enables presenters to display live, translated subtitles in any one of more than 60 supported text languages.
