I have clients and colleagues throughout the world. Many speak several languages that I unfortunately do not speak. I recently downloaded the latest version of skype and say the new translation button on the bottom right corner above my message.
When you click on the icon, it will being up a modal box. In the box, you are asked if you want call, message or both to translate and as it is based on a conversation by conversation basis, I can select what language I speak and what language the other participant speaks for this conversations.
After pressing save, the message from the other participant came back with a translation under the language that the other participant typed.
While it is machine translation, for the most part the translations were very accurate and would be able to be understood by a native speaker.
I am super excited to be able to use this feature starting now.