News
Microsoft Bringing Translation Feature to Yammer in Spring
- By Kurt Mackie
- March 01, 2013
Enterprise social networking application Yammer, which Microsoft acquired last year for $1.2 billion, will get translation capabilities by "late spring," Microsoft announced on Thursday.
Microsoft will engineer its Translator application to work with Yammer, according to the announcement. When a message arrives in a language other than the default language of the user, a "Translate" option will appear in the body of the message. Clicking that link will translate the message. There also will be a button to revert the message back to its original language.
About 200,000 organizations around the world collaborate using Yammer, which supports 39 languages. However, most (65 percent) of Yammer's current seven million users are located outside the United States. Adam Pisoni, Yammer's co-founder and general manager of engineering at the Microsoft Office Division, described the translation capability as an example of how Yammer is adding value.
"Removing language as a barrier to cross-company collaboration can be a competitive game changer for multinational organizations," Pisoni explained in a released statement.
Microsoft has announced positive fourth-quarter results since acquiring Yammer, which is now part of the Microsoft Office Division.
Yammer capabilities are getting added to various Microsoft products, and not just to Microsoft Office. For instance, Yammer capabilities are being added to Microsoft's SkyDrive Pro cloud storage service and Office Web Apps, with rollouts planned for this summer. Other products that may get Yammer additions include Dynamics CRM, SharePoint and the Skype voice-over-IP service.
About the Author
Kurt Mackie is senior news producer for 1105 Media's Converge360 group.