Translate text and speech with Microsoft Foundry Tools | AI-103 | Episode 21

Need multilingual text or real-time conversations? Azure provides purpose-built translation APIs for both text and speech. The key is knowing which SDK object performs which job.

Text Translation — know the difference

Translation changes language; transliteration changes script.

client = TextTranslationClient(endpoint, credential)

# English → French
result = client.translate(
    body=["Hello world"],
    to_language=["fr"]
)
# → "Bonjour le monde"

The source language can be auto-detected or supplied with from_language. translate() can also target multiple languages in one request.

Speech Translation — remember the pipeline

Audio → TranslationRecognizer → translated text → SpeechSynthesizer → Audio

• SpeechTranslationConfig → credentials + source/target languages
• AudioConfig → microphone/file input or audio output
• TranslationRecognizer → recognizes and translates incoming speech
• SpeechSynthesizer → converts translated text back to speech

config = SpeechTranslationConfig(endpoint, credential)
config.speech_recognition_language = "en-US"
config.add_target_language("fr")

recognizer = TranslationRecognizer(config, audio_in)
result = recognizer.recognize_once()

# result.translations["fr"] → translated text

Key decision

One target + streaming/live output → event-based synthesis
Multiple target languages → manual synthesis

Event-based synthesis supports one translation target; for multiple languages, iterate through the translated results and synthesize each separately.

Remember: Translate = language, Transliterate = script, TranslationRecognizer = speech → translated text, SpeechSynthesizer = text → speech.