Imagination and the challenge is whether it can form a service closed loop in the market segment and find a large and stable customer channel.
We are told that the remote simultaneous interpretation platform Akkadu recently won a seed round investment of Chifeng Venture Capital of RMB million, which is mainly used for investment in products and technology. Chixing Venture Capital is a fund jointly invested by the intelligent voice service provider Si Bi Chi and Yuan He Mu Fund, focusing on early projects in the field of artificial intelligence.
Akkadu was founded in 2018. Before the company officially registered, it was stationed in Tsinghua University’s creative innovation and entrepreneurship education platform x-lab and Tsinghua Science Park Enlightenment Star Incubator. The founder, Alvaro, is a Spanish. Both of them studied in telecommunications engineering. They were private drivers for Mr. Ren Zhengfei at the World Communication Conference in Spain. They were inspired by Huawei executives to come to China. Beijing Institute of Technology exchanged and started the translation business during the Tsinghua MBA program. The company’s six founding team members come from six different countries, including China, Spain, Finland, the United States, Uganda and India.
At present, Akkadu’s main product is a web-based remote simultaneous interpretation platform that supports 10 language pairs including Chinese and English simultaneous interpretation. The participating audience can scan the code on the mobile phone and select the translation channel to hear the real-time translation of the guest speech. Because audio content is available on the mobile phone, viewers can listen to it using their own mobile phones and headsets, eliminating the need for event organizers to provide the device.
In addition to giving viewers a better simultaneous interpretation service and participation experience, Akkadu also provides >Economic and convenient services are reflected in the following:
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Easy operation: Event organizers can create an event directly on the Akkadu platform and publish itThe Akkadu platform will provide quotations according to their needs. The related posters and speeches of the event can also be uploaded in advance.
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The process is short: the past simultaneous interpretation service is often the planning of the overall activity of the public relations company or the activity company, then go to the translation company, and then the translation company to contact the interpreter. Each link in the middle increases the cost of the active party. In addition, since the translator only communicates with the intermediary in the traditional mode, it is an obstacle to directly contact the translator. However, on Akkadu, the event party can directly browse the resumes and professional fields of the interpreters and select workers who are more in line with their own requirements.
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The price is relatively low, and the fee is flexible: the operator can save part of the cost by eliminating the intermediate link. Secondly, Akkadu supports a half-day or full-day fee model that can help the event plan more carefully.
For peer-to-peer workers, Akkadu is able to support remote translations, greatly improving their productivity. In the past, interpreters needed to carry out translation work in the “box” at the conference. With the optimization of the network environment, remote simultaneous interpretation has become possible. Zhao Yanqi, a founding member of Akkadu, told us that even if translators are co-transmitting overseas, the overall delay, including the natural simultaneous transmission delay, is within 3-5 seconds.
Akkadu’s interpreters currently have three levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Advanced, and the price of each level of translator is different. In recruiting interpreters, Akkadu mainly seeks through the recommendation system and the interpreter community. For beginners, Akkadu is gradually establishing a mechanism for cooperation with schools to provide more formal training and practice channels for students of simultaneous or linguistic majors. For middle and senior personnel, it will be screened by reviewing the translator’s past work experience and professional domain knowledge (such as blockchain, biomedical, etc.).
In China, simultaneous interpretation is an industry that does not yet have clear standards. According to Akkadu’s founding team, China has passed the CATTI (Translation Professional Qualification (Level)) exam, which has more than 100,000 people, but passed the exam. It does not mean that you can work directly. There are also a large number of simultaneous practitioners who have not been qualified for many years in the market. At present, the International Conference Interpreter Authority (AIIC) has more than 3,000 members. Members pay annual fees, and a large number of practitioners have not been certified by AIIC. Akkadu hopes to conduct more detailed division and skill standardization for interpreters in the following business, and establish a standard, effective and fair evaluation system.
In addition to the standard online simultaneous interpretation service, Akkadu also provides value-added services such as on-site Wi-Fi support and statistical analysis of participants. Next, Akkadu will further enhance the matching of hardware and software, achieve higher quality on-site radio and more stable transmission, and increase the new function of real-time output of on-site translation documents.
Customers, Akkadu has already served with companies and institutions such as Stanford Center, Amazon, McKinsey, and American Chamber of Commerce in China. Some customers have repurchase behaviors. Due to the short time, there is no way to collect representative behavior data. The company has also been exposed to some customers who need private deployment, but short-term Akkadu still wants to focus on polishing products and services.
About whether artificial intelligence can replace simultaneous interpretation, Akkadu founding team believes that it can not be fully realized in the short term. However, the translation of the machine in terms of partiality and the work of assisting the interpreters have become more and more obvious.