Language Interpretation is now Generally Available (GA) in Microsoft Teams Meetings

Today, we are happy to announce that language interpretation is Generally Available (GA) for Microsoft Teams Meetings! Here at Microsoft, we serve a diverse set of global customers, including governmental institutions that hold parliament meetings in multiple languages, multinational and multilingual corporations, businesses that work with vendors around the world, and many more. This feature was built to support customers and users who need to communicate in the virtual world across languages.

Our language interpretation feature will allow professional interpreters to convert the speaker’s message into another language without disrupting the speaker’s original flow or delivery. This simultaneous interpretation will lead to more inclusive meetings, where participants who speak different languages can fully collaborate with each other.

Language interpretation will allow users to:

• Listen to a meeting in the language they are most comfortable using.
• Collaborate in meetings where multiple languages are spoken.
• Support inclusivity in meetings by making spoken content more accessible to all participants.

Organizers can invite interpreters to a meeting from Meeting options once the meeting is scheduled/saved. Organizers can also promote a participant to interpreter during a meeting.

Interpreters can start interpreting immediately after joining a meeting.

When participants join a meeting with language interpretation enabled, they can select a language channel to listen to during the meeting. They should then be able to hear the interpreter’s translation at a louder volume than the main speaker.

You can read more about this feature here

Meeting Option to enable language interpretation.

In-meeting roster promotion of a participant to an interpreter

Attendee selection of language channel to listen to

Today’s announcement is yet another effort in our journey to break communication and language barriers. More to come.