In this global era, breaking the language barrier to facilitate seamless communication with people around the world is a daily challenge. Released in 2012 based on ETRI researchers’ linguistic intelligence research for the previous 25 years, Genie Talk, a translation application, has been downloaded 2.2 million times as a means to enable free communication with users of different languages.
Genie Talk’s development was initiated in 2008 with the support from the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning, and the app’s Korean-English translation service was launched in 2012, followed by Korean-Japanese and Korean-Chinese service in 2014. In 2015, the app began to provide Spanish and French translation as well. Genie Talk is therefore currently able to offer voice translation service for five different languages with a capacity between 100,000 to 800,000 words, depending on the language. Compared to Google’s and other overseas automatic translation services, Genie Talk has about a 10% higher translation rate in the tourism-related area, achieving a recognition rate with almost 85% accuracy.
Genie Talk offers three major functions: interpreting the user’s words into another language, translating words or sentences typed or copy-and-pasted by the user, and translating the words or sentences in a photograph. Users can directly talk with a foreign user through the app’s voice recognition-based interpretation function, and chat in real time using Kakao Talk or other messenger apps by translating the words they type. They can simply take a picture containing foreign language to translate the words in the photograph.
To be held between February 9 and 25, 2018, the PyeongChang Winter Olympics will essentially require interpretation service for 50,000-strong athletes and visitors from over 100 countries. In this regard, ETRI is planning to add three more languages—German, Russian, and Arabic—by the end of 2017 in an effort to present to the world Korea’s outstanding ICT achievements through this international event. To this end, through a form of technological contribution, ETRI provided its original technologies for Genie Talk’s voice recognition and automatic translation to Hancom Interfree, a subsidiary of Hancom, one of the leading research companies in Korea. By jointly developing the app, the two institutions will be able to offer automatic translation service for eight languages at the 2018 Winter Games.
On August 15th and 16th, Hancom unveiled Hancom Malang Malang Genie Talk in Jeju Island to officially launch its new application service. Starting with the Olympic test events from the end of 2016, the company will implement the pilot automatic translation service designed for the PyeongChang Olympics and continuously improve its functions.
The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning plans to launch a full-fledged effort to develop Arabic translation service from 2017 to promote convenient communication with countries using Arabic, which have increasing significance as strategic partners of Korea with regard to economic, cultural (Korean Wave), and medical exchanges. In the medium to long term, it also aims to expand the service for other languages including those used in Southeast Asia to ensure smooth communication involving various languages.
“The more the users enjoy the service of Genie Talk, Korea’s independently developed automatic translation service, the greater the app’s translation quality will become,” noted Dr. Dong Won Han, Vice President of ETRI. “ETRI researchers will make utmost efforts to help all Koreans conveniently travel around the world without facing the language barrier.”
Smartphone users can try the smart translation app free of charge, by searching “Genie Talk” at Android’s Google Play Store or Apple’s App Store and downloading “Hancom Malang Malang Genie Talk.”
