International communication will take a leap forward when Microsoft unveils a real-time language conversion translation tool via Skype (News - Alert) later this year.

Called Skype Translator, the technology combines speech recognition, automatic translation and machine learning technologies. As a result, Skype users will be able to connect with someone who speaks another language.

Users simply speak via Skype in their native language. The tool translates the speech and repeats it verbally as well as via text on the screen in just seconds.

“Imagine in the very near future technology allowing humans to bridge geographic and language boundaries to connect mind to mind and heart to heart in ways never before possible,” said Gurdeep Pall, corporate vice president of Skype and Lync at Microsoft (News - Alert) in a company blog detailing the introduction.

Indeed, Skype Translator is a bit of a coup for Microsoft, which bought Skype for $8.5 billion in 2011. Already one of the most popular video conferencing technologies, Skype Translator has the potential to strengthen the service’s market position. In 2014, Skype reportedly has more than 300 million connected users each month, and more than 2 billion minutes of conversation a day, Pall said.

Skype’s traffic was almost 40 percent the size of the entire conventional international telecom market in 2013, according to a study from telecommunications research company TeleGeography (News - Alert).

“Such strong traffic growth more than 10 years after Skype’s launch is particularly impressive in light of the growing acceptance of a wide range of alternative over-the-top (OTT) communications applications for mobile devices,” wrote TeleGeography in its market report. “OTT messaging applications are among the most popular mobile apps, and several, including Skype, WhatsApp, Facebook (News - Alert) Messenger, Viber, Line, Tango, Google Hangouts, and Samsung’s ChatOn, have been installed more than 100 million times from Google’s online Play app store, alone.”

Skype Translator will launch as a beta app for Windows 8 users sometime in 2014.