(Tuesday, January 24th, 2022. New York City, NY) – From the international team that combines language and multilingual communication experts with leading authorities in machine speech translation technology, KUDO introduced their AI-powered, real-time Speech Translator (patent pending) at a digital launch event on January 24.
KUDO AI will initially be integrated into the KUDO platform, making it the first end-to-end solution for AI-powered multilingual meetings and events (offering a full feature suite that includes a request-to-speak function, screen and document sharing, polling/voting, handover/relay, multilingual recording and captioning, and more). Eventually, the solution will be extended to all of KUDO’s partner platforms – from Zoom and Microsoft Teams to ON24 and HopIn. In its ability to translate speech in real-time, KUDO AI also differs from most AI offerings on the market.
“Most in this space are still focused on speech-to-text translation with an output of written captions,” said KUDO CEO and global authority on multilingual conferences, Fardad Zabetian. “Few are attempting speech-to-speech translation, and those who do produce it in a consecutive modality (sentence-by-sentence). At KUDO, we focus on simultaneous or ‘real-time’ interpretation. And now, in addition to the skills of our professional human interpreters, we have an adjunct AI component in our portfolio capable of real-time speech translation in certain use cases.”
Today, these use cases are one-to-many webinars, training, and offline videos, while KUDO’s human interpretation service is best suited for higher-level communication such as board meetings, customer interviews, summits, and conferences. Like the 12,000+ strong community of KUDO human interpreters, KUDO AI will eventually become available in a wide range of languages. In its pilot version though, KUDO AI will be available in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German, with a plan to add new languages on a bi-weekly basis. But it’s KUDO’s joint roots in language and technology that make the methodology behind their Speech Translator innovative.
“As machine translation technology goes, the approach of KUDO AI is unique,” said KUDO AI’s architect, Dr. Claudio Fantinuoli, KUDO’s Head of Innovation. “The solution integrates state-of-the-art Natural Language Processing systems – such as speech recognition and synthesis – with KUDO innovative language models trained to support real-time, continuous translation of spoken language.”
In layman’s terms, KUDO AI goes a step further than the norm by analyzing speech structure in real-time and breaking it down in a way that mimics a more natural and meaningful pace of speaking. The result is a unique user experience that offers the ability to customize voices, adjust to language variants (such as French Canadian or Brazilian Portuguese), and even control speech fluency, based on KUDO Speedometer technology.
Nevertheless, according to Ewandro Magalhaes, KUDO’s Chief Language Office, “in many use cases, this is no substitute for human interpreters. A skilled linguist can read the audience in ways a machine cannot, derive meaning from intonation, accommodate sarcasm, and make adaptations and corrections as (s)he goes along.” A former chief interpreter in the UN system, he knows language access matters as much as quality, though, and that there are market segments where such nuance is seldom present. “Whenever the use of trained interpreters would be impractical or unaffordable, that’s where KUDO AI can help. It provides basic language access to these use cases so more people can break the isolation sometimes imposed by language.”
For existing clients booking a new meeting on the KUDO platform, KUDO AI will be offered as a freemium service, and new users will be able to start a free trial at Kudoway.com. The solution can be accessed 24/7 and at a cost-effective price, further democratizing multilingual communication, and highlighting KUDO’s vision ‘to give everyone the power to understand and be understood in their own language.’
About KUDO
KUDO is the world leader in providing real-time multilingual solutions that enable people to communicate effortlessly in any language—on any platform. Their network of 12,000 professional language interpreters, combined with their ground-breaking Speech Translator, empower organizations of all sizes to collaborate more efficiently, with greater inclusivity, and on an international scale. KUDO Inc. is a New-York based technology start-up founded and managed by language and conferencing industry insiders seeking to create a world in which everyone has the power to understand and be understood in their own language.
Contact
Chloë Walford-Delahaye
chloe@kudo.ai