LONDON, November 19, 2020 – A revolutionary new translation technology that allows direct conversation between speakers of 26 global language has been released today. Speechly, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to translate spoken word and audio, is configured to work with devices made by headset company Jabra to support one-to-one conversations.
The technology can be applied in a wide variety of scenarios and is designed to help organisations cut interpretation fees and simplify the translation process to improve communication.
As people across the globe interact more than ever, public and private sector organisations frequently encounter communication problems which reduce their ability to provide services effectively. Speechly is designed to support a wide variety of users, from police who cannot communicate with victims of crime, to tourist offices that are unable to address enquiries. The technology can also support paramedics, family doctors, business meetings, inter-governmental negotiations, disaster response, hotels, journalism, academic research and much more.
Until now, the only options for translation were either to use online text translation tools (which are often inaccurate, slow and unhelpful for people who cannot read/write) or to hire expensive interpreters who charge high fees to businesses and taxpayers.
Speechly was created to address these challenges by IP Solutions and software firm FITTS. Speechly uses AI to recognise the language used by the first speaker and translates this instantaneously to audio in the second speaker’s language. They can then reply in their own language and Speechly will translate for the first speaker. In its first iteration, Speechly will work with compatible Jabra professional headsets and speakerphones for conversations between two individuals. All Speechly conversations can be recorded, and a transcription of the conversations is also provided.
James Haworth, Managing Director at FITTS explains why the company built Speechly: “There is enormous demand for accurate, high quality and reliable translation in multiple settings. We noticed that in many of these situations, organisations were either foregoing translation altogether – which caused miscommunication and misunderstanding – or they were spending enormous sums of money on interpreters to resolve issues that were often fairly simple in nature”.
Lee Davis, Enterprise Software Sales Manager, EMEA North at Jabra added that: “We are continually seeking to enhance our hardware with solutions that bring added value to our customers. By partnering with FITTS to launch Speechly, we are offering a unique service to Jabra customers who can now communicate even more effectively than before”.
Speechly can be configured to work with compatible Jabra professional devices and in the future will be enabled to support conversations with multiple parties in a room, or remotely over Microsoft Teams. The translation element of the service utilises Microsoft’s ‘natural language processing’ AI services. All conversations are stored securely in the cloud and billing is based on usage.
Speechly can translate between the following 26 languages: Arabic, Cantonese, Catalan, Chinese Simplified, Chinese Traditional, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish.
To learn more, visit https://www.speechly.app/