Microsoft Edge will soon support real-time translation of videos on several platforms, the company announced on Tuesday (May 21). It was announced just a day after the company introduced its Copilot+ PCs, which are also capable of translating pre-recorded as well as live videos in real-time. Leveraging generative AI, Microsoft says the upcoming feature can not only translate captions on Microsoft Edge but also dub videos in the viewer’s native language – all in real time.
According to an official blog post, the real-time video translation feature will be able to translate spoken content in the form of captions as well as dubbing. It is aimed at making videos accessible to a wider range of people, especially to those with disabilities. Microsoft says the feature is currently able to 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 is also capable of translating videos on platforms such as YouTube, Coursera, and LinkedIn. News websites such as CNBC, Reuters, MoneyControl and Bloomberg will also support this feature. According to Microsoft, the translation of the content happens on-device with no cloud-based processing involved, which means “no segment of the video or audio content ever exits the machine”.
An unlisted video on YouTube by the official channel of Microsoft Edge gives a glimpse of how this feature might work. The first-time use will involve the installation of the language translation model by Edge. 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.
A choice will then be offered – whether to provide subtitles or audio. The subtitle option will provide captions in the chosen language, while selecting the audio option will offer a dubbing of the video, after a few seconds of processing. While the exact timeline of the rollout of the video translation feature has not been announced, Microsoft says that it will soon add support for more languages as well as websites.