Microsoft just announced that its personal digital assistant Cortana can now make real-time translations in almost 40 languages for Windows 10. At the moment, this powerful software is only available in 7 countres: US, China, UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, but Microsoft will definitely launch it elsewhere in the near future.
This is an interesting way to drive interest into Cortana compared to the competition, most notably Apple's Siri, which only works in their mobile devices. Cortana is available across all devices including desktop. Cortana is also a strong competitor to Siri that it can translate words, phrases, and entire sentences instantly.
Windows 10 users simply say "Hey Cortana" to activate the feature followed by a sentence. An example from The Verge is, "Hey Cortana, translate 'where is the nearest taxi stand' in French. Cortana will then display on the screen the answer, as well as say it out loud. In case Cortana does not know the answer, a web search will be performed. You can also just type in the question directly to get an answer.
While Cortana is only available in a couple of countries at the moment, it can however translate in up to 40 languages. A notable novel language it offers is Klingon. Here is the complete list of Cortana's supported languages:
Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (Simplified), Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Klingon (pIqaD), Korean, Latvian, Malay, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh.
Windows 10 users in 4 other countries are also due to get access to Cortana: Japan, Canada, Australia, and India, PC World reports. This will be the first expansion of Cortana since Windows 10 was released last month. Cortana is also now available in a new beta app for Android.
Check out this video of a human and Cortana conversing:
