Twitter is testing a new feature that can translate text in a foreign language to spoken language using Bing Translator on iOS devices.
Twitter, the popular social networking site, is looking to connect people across the world especially in the exciting times of the FIFA World Cup 2014 matches. While most users connect well with people speaking in local languages, it becomes a challenge to interact with people tweeting in a foreign language. But Twitter has found a way out by introducing a new feature that translates the text.
Twitter's new translation feature is powered by Microsoft's Bing and is available to limited users of its iOS mobile app. Though the feature may not give the best translation, Bing does its part in maintaining the context. Only a handful of mobile users are able to test the feature, which is a usual practice at Twitter before a fully-fledged rollout.
"A small percentage of users can see the option to translate the text of a tweet with Bing Translator as part of an experiment," the company's spokesperson told Mashable. "We want to help people connect and discover what's new - no matter where they are in the world or what languages they speak."
The micro-blogging service did not confirm if or whether the feature will ever be integrated into the other app forms or the web.
As it is available to a handful of users, Faceblog.in.th managed to gather some screenshots of tweets in Thai, Japanese and Korean and translated to text in English. As one can see the translation is not accurate. Twitter worked with Microsoft earlier in late 2012 to bring the translation feature to its service. But the company had only tested the feature back then and it was never rolled out to a wider audience.
As long as any feature is in its test phase, it is hard to predict if it will ever come to fruition. However, considering it is the busy World Cup season and Twitter has been updating its service with several features such as World Cup timelines to iPhones and re-release of hashflags to desktop, expanding the translation feature to more platforms is a possibility.
