-Eventcat, a real-time interpretation and subtitle service that changes the way global events are communicated
-Event Cat, full-scale expansion in media and broadcasting sectors… Expanding scope to include real-time news and sports broadcasting
– Targeting the 36 trillion global market by understanding context and improving multimodal translation technology through MediaCat
AI translation technology startup XL8 is accelerating its entry into the global market by advancing its technology, including improving real-time translation quality and expanding voice interpretation support services.
With the growth of OTT content, the media localization market is expected to grow to KRW 10 trillion by 2029, and the interpretation market is also expected to reach KRW 26 trillion in the same year. In particular, the industry predicts that demand for AI interpretation and translation will rapidly increase due to the shortage of professional interpreters and translators.
We met with XL8 CEO Jeong Yeong-hun to hear about XL8's strategy to strengthen its technological competitiveness in the AI translation market and expand into the global market.
■ Focus on improving ‘context understanding’ and ‘multimodal’ translation technology
“Machine translation used to simply replace words, but in the future, AI will provide natural and accurate translations that understand the context and situation,” said CEO Jeong. Multimodal translation refers to integrated translation in which AI simultaneously processes not only text but also voice and video data, and takes into account the speaker’s emotions, tone, and gestures.
XL8 will focus on developing its own AI translation engine that accurately reflects various languages and cultural nuances by focusing on context-aware capabilities and advanced multimodal translation technologies. CEO Jeong said, “We expect that technologies that provide instantaneous and accurate translation without time lag at live events or conferences will become even more advanced,” and predicted that innovation in real-time translation technology will also accelerate.
We also plan to focus on market expansion this year. Through our main service, Eventcat, we plan to expand our real-time multilingual interpretation services for conferences, seminars, and live broadcasts, and expand our service area to the entire industry. In particular, we plan to strengthen our subtitle services in the media sector, such as real-time news, sports broadcasts, and online streaming broadcasts, and expand our collaboration with broadcasting stations, OTT platforms, and news media.
■ EventCAT, Full-scale Expansion into Media and Broadcasting Fields… Improving Real-time Translation Quality
'Zoom Real-time Interpretation Solution EventCAT', launched by XLATE in June 2023, has expanded its service to major video conferencing platforms such as Google Meet and MS Teams. Currently, more than 10,000 users use the real-time interpretation service for more than 50,000 hours every month, and it is increasing participant immersion by supporting communication with executives and employees of multinational companies and multilingual subtitles for global events.
Recently, the company has been expanding its business into the media and broadcasting sectors. Through 'EventCAT LiveSubs', it is expanding its services to real-time news, sports broadcasting, and online streaming broadcasting, and is also strengthening collaboration with broadcasting stations, OTT platforms, and news media. It has also accelerated its entry into the domestic live streaming market by forming a partnership with Streaming Korea, an online live broadcasting specialist. It is also actively pursuing entry into the US, Japanese, and European markets.
Eventcat's strengths are cost efficiency and scalability. Unlike existing simultaneous interpretation that requires interpreter labor costs and specialized equipment, AI-based automatic interpretation can significantly reduce costs. It supports more than 40 languages and is easily accessible on mobile and web. All interpretation content is automatically saved, allowing for the creation and summary of meeting minutes, and it is cloud-based, so it is not limited by location.
It successfully provided services at large-scale events such as the 2024 Climate Industry International Expo, Seoul Investor Forum, and SK AI SUMMIT, recording up to 20,000 concurrent users. In 2025, it plans to present its services at various events across the country, starting with AI SEOUL 2025.
XL8 plans to enhance the AI algorithm to improve the real-time translation quality of EventCat and strengthen the AI Glossary function that supports voice interpretation and industry-specific terminology. It is also developing participant interaction functions such as real-time Q&A and AI-based automatic response.
CEO Jeong said, “Eventcat is developing into a user-friendly AI interpretation solution that we are creating together with our customers. We will continue to update Eventcat to provide more accurate results, better readability, and easier-to-use tools so that customers who face language barriers can successfully conduct business or events through it.”
■ Leading the AI-based video content translation market with MediaCAT
Since its launch in September 2022, XL8's video translation tool, MediaCAT, has established itself as a representative translation solution using the MT-PE (machine translation-expert review) method. This cloud-based service can process dialogue extraction, time code matching, translation, and dubbing all at once with a simple click after uploading the video. MediaCAT is evaluated to have promoted the growth of the global media content translation market.
MediaCat provides integrated functions of speech-to-text (automatic subtitle generation), high-quality multilingual translation (Machine Translation), and AI voice synthesis (Text-to-Speech). In particular, it has a translation accuracy 40% higher than that of global companies such as Amazon, Google, and DeepL. This is the result of context awareness, multi-modal translation, and personalized translation technologies.
MediaCat uses context-aware translation technology that allows AI to understand the context of a conversation and select the optimal translation. For example, the phrase “bring that” can be translated differently depending on the situation, such as “bring that” or “bring it here.” It also uses multimodal translation technology that recognizes gender, age, and relationship to reflect the speaker’s characteristics, such as translating a child’s speech in a cute way or a CEO’s speech in a formal way, as well as customized personalized translation technology that automatically learns and translates corporate brand slogans, product names, etc.
XL8 introduced parallel processing technology to MediaCat, increasing translation speed by 25 times compared to before. It can process 1 hour of content in 15 minutes, which has drastically reduced the production time for various content such as news, dramas, movies, and advertisements. MediaCat has also been adopted as the official translation engine for global OTT platforms such as Netflix and Disney.
XL8 plans to advance AI and improve functions to improve MediaCat’s translation quality. It plans to expand the AI Glossary function to strengthen customer-tailored translation and expand multimodal learning data to implement intelligent translation that reflects emotions and relationships between characters. In addition, it aims to implement expert-level translation quality by reflecting the client’s translation modifications to the AI model to ensure continuous learning, and improving speaker diarization and automatic punctuation insertion functions through advancement of the STT/NMT (Neural Machine Translation) model.
■ “We will break down language barriers with AI and create a world without discrimination.”
What XL8 ultimately aims to achieve is to eliminate language barriers and secure equal global content accessibility through EventCat and MediaCat. CEO Jeong stated, “The advancement of AI technology will go beyond simple convenience and enable equal access to information and cultural enjoyment for humanity,” and “XL8 will lead this change.”
XL8 is an AI translation startup founded in Silicon Valley in 2019 by experts from Google, Apple, and Qualcomm. With Series A investment in 2023, the total investment will reach 15 billion won. In the same year, it acquired AHT (American Hi-Tech Transcription & Reporting, Inc.), a translation company, to strengthen its expertise.
The representative service MediaCat was selected as the Top AI & Data Product at the 2024 Product Awards, and XL8 was also selected for SK Telecom and Hana Bank's 'AI Startup Accelerator 2nd Generation'. Recently, EventCat was nominated for an award at the Hermes Awards, which selects technological innovation companies in the global media entertainment industry. The final winner will be announced on April 3.
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