Microsoft said Thursday its Yammer social network for corporate communications would add message translation capabilities to help firms with multilingual operations. Microsoft bought Yammer last June for $1.2 billion, to bring enterprise social networking to Microsoft's Office division.

Yammer enables companies to make private networks that let employees communicate while keeping exchanges away from public viewing.

Microsoft wants to promote adoption of Yammer's service tied to other software or services such as Skype and Office 365.