LinkedIn has added a new feature that allows immediate translation of posts in its news feed.
Now, below a post on LinkedIn that is different from a user’s native language, there is a button to “See Translation.” Users can then rate the quality of the translation.
In a blog post, LinkedIn’s Angelika Clayton and Bing Zhao wrote that the ability to translate posts has been a frequent request from users. More than half of LinkedIn’s active users live outside the U.S., so breaking down language barriers has been a priority of the company for years.
Building the translation features required collaboration between numerous teams across LinkedIn and Microsoft, which bought the business social network for $26.2 billion in 2016. The Microsoft Text Analytics API from Azure that detects up to 120 languages and Translator Text API from Microsoft Cognitive Services, which offers the ability to customize translations for a specific domain, such as the news feed, play an important role in the new See Translation feature.
Since Microsoft’s deal to buy LinkedIn closed in December 2016, the two companies have been rolling out integrations. Most recently, LinkedIn leveraged Microsoft’s Bing Maps to start putting commute times on job pages.
