Microsoft Teams' live captioning feature is great for the deaf or hard of hearing, but there's a huge problem; it's only compatible with the English language right now. However, Microsoft is aiming to change that by implementing more languages into this amazing feature.

When Will Microsoft Teams Go International?

News of this feature appeared over on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap. It's a great way to get a sneak peek into what Microsoft is brewing up for its products; we recently discovered Microsoft's intent to add offline messages to Teams from the Roadmap.

Now, Microsoft has just added a new feature to the Roadmap. It's named "Microsoft Teams: Live meetings captions in additional languages" and has the feature ID 70593.

The description goes into more detail as to which languages are making their way onto Microsoft Teams' live captions:

Today, Teams meetings live captions is available for English. We will enable live captions in additional spoken languages such as German, French, Spanish, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, and Dutch.

If you're ready to boot up Teams and get to work in foreign languages, you'll, unfortunately, have to wait for a little bit until this feature goes live. Microsoft has pinned the feature for a July 2021 release date, so it's a little while until you can see international captions on Teams.

Microsoft's Push for Productivity Domination

It's not a surprise that Microsoft has been making profit due to COVID-19's effect on the world. Companies have had to rely on Microsoft's services and hardware to continue working while everyone is working from home.

However, Microsoft does have a pretty big problem. Due to the sudden and drastic shift to working from home, the software giant hasn't had nearly enough time to properly flesh out the service for worldwide use.

Teams naturally assume you're fluent in English, but with COVID-19 spreading to every corner of the globe, Teams can no longer make such assumptions. As such, Microsoft is now playing catch-up to ensure its competitors don't get a foot in the door overseas before it can.

Making Microsoft Teams More Overseas-Friendly

With the rapid onset of COVID-19 around the world, Microsoft hasn't had nearly the time they'd like to prep Teams for international use. Now, it's a race against time as Microsoft adds foreign language support before the competition scoop up the market.

This isn't the only example of Microsoft fighting off its rivals. The software giant recently allowed unlimited calls in a bid to stymie Zoom's progress.

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