Microsoft recently unveiled a new technology that would provide 'near-real time' language translation for Skype. 

With the new feature, Skype hopes that it will make international video calls much easier especially those having with language barriers. 

Microsoft, Skype's parent company, introduced the new feature at the Code technology conference last Tuesday. The main attraction of the unveiling took place when Gurdeep Pall, Skype's vice president, spoke in English while talking to German-speaking Skype manager who is based in Europe. 

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After a sentence of English from Pall, an automated voice translated it in German. 

However, the live demo is not yet in real-time and the translation is not yet 100 percent accurate. Those present in the audience who speaks and understands German said the translation was 'not so good,' but they generally understood the essence of what's being said. 

For all its imperfections, this new feature of Skype is still considered by many as a significant upgrade. Skype currently has 300 million users who actively use the app monthly around the world. Many of them might see this new Skype feature as another opportunity to conduct video conferences and business meetings. 

The unveiling could also encourage other players to also improve their offerings by adding a similar feature. Apple has FaceTime and Google has Hangouts. 

The new Skype feature also shows how Satya Nadella, Microsoft's new CEO, is turning ideas from the drawing board into actual products. 

Microsoft Research, the company's research and development division, was responsible for Skype's new translation feature. It was also the same team responsible for Kinect, one of Microsoft's famous Xbox devices. 

According to Nadella, Microsoft Research began tinkering with machine translation some 15 years ago and has since been working on neural networks that would combine translation, speech recognition and speech synthesis. 

Nadella adds that people should wait for some more features in this line of product development, specifically what he called transfer learning. 

He said that users can teach the machine new language and it will be good at it. 

"If you teach it English, it learns English," Nadella said. "Then you teach it Mandarin, it learns Mandarin, but it becomes better at English. 

Tagslanguage translation, video communication, Microsoft Corp., Skype