How Microsoft taught Skype to translate

Katrina Rippel is a careful speaker who follows all the rules. Hao Chen is a more freewheeling conversationalist. And I'm a nonstop troublemaker, constantly blurting out whatever notions pass through my head. On a recent morning, the three of us met in cyberspace to find out how well (or poorly) we could communicate in a mixture of German, Mandarin, and English. Each of us spoke only our native language.