Pilot service for ‘Genie Talk’,
a mobile Korean-English translating service to help you overcome language barriers, has officially launched

Mobile Translating Technology for Korean-English

In 2012, ETRI launched the pilot service of 'Genie Talk', an automatic translating application for mobile devices using automatic translation technology. The first version of the application (for Korean-English service) was launched in Jejudo (January) and at Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea (May to August) in 2012 as a trial version. In October, the scope of the service was expanded to the entire population and to foreigners visiting or residing in Korea. At that time, the auto translation rate of Genie Talk was over 80%, higher by over 15 percent than that of Google Translate, which was recognized as the top auto translating service in the world. Genie Talk also won the Grand Prize at the ‘2012 Smart Content Awards & Conference’, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

01

Genie Talk,
Smart Auto
Translating
Application for You

Whether you want it or not, it is sometimes necessary to communicate with foreign people; for example, if you are traveling abroad or if a foreigner asks you for directions. If you are confident in a foreign language, it is not a problem at all. But if you are not, even a simple conversation with foreigners can be a big challenge.
If you are the latter case, Genie Talk, a mobile auto translation app developed by ETRI, can be a great relief for you.
Genie Talk is based on home-grown automatic translating technology developed by ETRI as part of its software source technology development project. Genie Talk provides an excellent and convenient user interface, and translating performance even greater than that of Google translate, known as the best translating application in service now. Genie Talk is a sensational translating application, with over 1.2 million downloads in just 100 days. Now, let's look more closely at the amazing performance and usage of Genie Talk, which is now broadly used by people around the world.

02

Auto Translating Service:
The Flower of Software Technology

Automatic translating technology refers to an application that allows two conversing parties to communicate freely using their own native language. It takes great time, money, and effort to create this application and as such it is called ‘the Flower of Software Technology’; it also has had a remarkable impact on almost every aspect of our lives. Auto translating technology is becoming the best solution to tackle the language barrier, which is one of the biggest problems that we face on earth. In recognition that auto translating technology can be a key element in enhancing national and corporate competitiveness, a number of global businesses and research institutes have been scrambling for development and commercialization of this technology.

Automatic translating technology consists largely of three parts: speech recognition, automatic translation, and speech synthesis. Speech recognition, the first step of auto translating, is a process in which voice signals recognized by the translating machine are converted into characters. The speech recognizer searches for the right word, and then an optimal word sequence is obtained by referring to the pronunciation dictionary, in which the pronunciation of each word is specified. The word strings obtained are applied to a language model, and then come out as a complete sentence.

The next step is the automatic translation process, in which the original text is translated into another language. In general, the text sentences used in the automatic translation process are considered to have no serious errors, so the input sentences can be used in the translation process without alteration. This means that most errors in the automatic translating process come from the speech recognition phase. This is why the quality of the translation technology depends largely on how advanced the voice recognition technology is.

Voice synthesis, the final step in auto translation, is the process in which the translated content in the target language is provided in the form of a voice that people can hear and understand. For this phase, a voice synthesis technique for natural spoken dialog is required, as in the voice recognition process.

03

Auto Translating APP : Genie Talk
Developed Solely using Domestic Technology

Genie Talk can recognize 270,000 Korean words and 65,000 English words, mostly in tourism and everyday conversation, providing users with quality translating services for basic communication. The pilot service, launched on Jejudo Island and at Expo 2012 Yeosu Korea in 2012, was a big success. It also played an important role in the Incheon Asian Games in 2014. “Incheon Metropolitan City Interpreting Assistance”, an auto translating app for the Incheon Asian Games developed based on Genie Talk, was downloaded by a total of 14,400 users over two months from August to October in 2014.

Genie Talk’s full-fledged auto translating service for five languages (English, Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, and French) was launched in 2016 by Hancom Interfree under the name of "HanCom MalangMalang Genie Talk". It will also be available to the athletes and executives from around the world at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

In order to develop speech recognition and language translation software as well as auto translating service, multilingual speech DB is necessary. ETRI has continuously built and distributed language speech DBs for Korean, English, Japanese and Chinese, and expanded the DB’s scope to French in 2014, and to German, Russian, Arabic, and Vietnamese (colloquial style) in 2016. These DBs are provided to domestic SMEs at prices over 90% lower than those offered by overseas institutions such as the European Language Resources Association (ELRA). As of April 2016, 247 DBs had been distributed to 57 domestic institutions, resulting in a total cost savings of KRW 43 billion.