Azure AI Translator capabilities

  • 3 minutes

Early attempts at machine translation applied literal translations. A literal translation is where each word is translated to the corresponding word in the target language. This approach presents some issues. For one case, there may not be an equivalent word in the target language. Another case is where literal translation can change the meaning of the phrase or not get the context correct.

Artificial intelligence systems must be able to understand, not only the words, but also the semantic context in which they're used. In this way, the service can return a more accurate translation of the input phrase or phrases. The grammar rules, formal versus informal, and colloquialisms all need to be considered.

Azure AI Translator supports text-to-text translation between more than 130 languages. When using Azure AI Translator, you can specify one from language with multiple to languages, enabling you to simultaneously translate a source document into multiple languages.

Using Azure AI Translator

Azure AI Translator includes the following capabilities:

  • Text translation - used for quick and accurate text translation in real time across all supported languages.
  • Document translation - used to translate multiple documents across all supported languages while preserving original document structure.
  • Custom translation - used to enable enterprises, app developers, and language service providers to build customized neural machine translation (NMT) systems.

You can use Azure AI Translator in Azure AI Foundry, a unified platform for enterprise AI operations, model builders, and application development. The service is also available for use in Microsoft Translator Pro a mobile application, designed specifically for enterprises, that enables seamless real-time speech-to-speech translation.

Next, let's learn how to get started with language capabilities in Azure AI Foundry portal.