Ear Pod That Translates Languages Paper Example

Since days immemorial, the form of communication which is unique is communication. Language and culture for the periods have evolved. The language of human gives speakers the chance to express and expose their thoughts verbally. The languages used by speakers are different but are used to create sentences and exchange information about places, people and things. A language barrier is, therefore, a drawback in the world of business. For instance, companies involved in international businesses experience challenges of communication in global face fronts. Massive resources are used to make sure there is proper communication in places of work. There is also a digital lifestyle of nomadism and rise of remote working which enhance global interaction all over the world. Language barrier describes the inability to pass information between people as a result of differences in linguistics or between people with varying language dialect or background. Amidst the language barrier, it can be concluded that there is little communication or no communication at all.

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Various instances of language barrier include travelling, classrooms and workplace. When you travel to another location or nation where the native language is not the one you speak, you probably will have difficulties to communicate with the people of the area. The most common barrier to communication is the variation in terms of languages because two people of different native languages will not possibly understand each other. Dialects and accents from different places may vary even if they speak the same language; for example, Indians have 720 dialects within the 22 major languages. In other terms, language barriers cause serious problems for immigrants, business and medical field. By the fact that obstacles of language cannot be overcome easily, the problem can be ameliorated using machine translation to enable two people of different languages to have a flowing communication.

Due to the increasing globalisation, immigration and foreign collaboration, people from different languages and cultures try to find a unifying ground which prompts desperate situations. For instance, in the year 2011, about 58% of people who never spoke the English language in the American houses confessed that they spoke English better, but 7% of them also admitted they didn't speak English at all. Language barriers are especially potent for the non- Romantic speakers. About 50% of those who spoke Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese spoke good English. At times, the problems that occur can be considered as mere annoyances like being in a situation of not able to understand languages when studying or travelling abroad. But when it comes to the healthcare sector, immigrants face problems when trying to describe their signs and symptoms to medics which may affect treatment on the negative side or directly cause delay. In the American hospital, one study showed that about 87% of patients who spoke Spanish and didn't have an interpreter believed that one should have been present for the translation. In a specific case, a hospital paid 71 million dollars as a compensation for a malpractice settlement following a patient's accidental treatment for an overdose of a drug when in reality he was merely nauseated. The misunderstanding arose over the wrong interpretation of the term "intoxicado" and illustrates the drawbacks of barrier in language. Also, the rapid expansion in the business world prompts CEOs and managers to form a rapport and interact with people from different styles. (Arizpe, 2014) It is unfortunate that language barrier has been detrimental to everyday communication, job interviews, advertising and business plan.

Earbud translators have eventually popped up on the global market. The devices play a vital role in communication, but in real life though, the devices are far from perfect. They are merely reliable for travellers searching for concise answers for the brief questions. Researchers who have tried to work through the technology are for the Statistical Machine Translation (SMT), the translations are created based on the statistical models which have parameters derived from the bilingual text corpora analysis. Some comment that SMT resembles a game of chess environment where one makes only a limited number of moves. SMT, for instance, works by doing a calculation possible to make the most appropriate translation. It looks for a grouping of six words of the source language and then looks for instances of the six words in the target language.

Other researchers working out the kinks in translation technology design chips to view it in a new approach. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been designed in Neural Machine Translation (NMT) to do translations through trial and error method. NMT makes use of the neural network which is a machine system trained explicitly to rate the candidates of translation. Google advocates for NMT, their recent NMT is art for introduction of a translation machine model for deep learning which allows translation to take place on the phone.

Other earbuds such as Waverly Labs Pilot Translating Earpiece use the connection of Wi-Fi to effect translation with the aid of cloud servers. Some such as Logbar's iLi translator held by handwork locally. For the pilot, words are transferred to the cloud which is then processed by the help of voice recognition, voice synthesis and machine translation and finally taken back to the user. All these processes take place within a few moments usually milliseconds. The pilot works for the group as well as for person-to-person conversations and can translate between French, English, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Korean, Japanese, Hindi, Greek, German, Chinese Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and other languages too.

Adopters of these devices comment that it works best with short words, the translations are completed in two or fewer seconds. The lag time between speech gets larger as soon as you start real conversations, say 12 or more seconds. Researchers, however, say there is still a long way to go into optimising the devices. Translation technology based on AI has been proven to make obvious mistakes that human cannot like the omission of words, stumping with proper names, giving translations that don't match the context or puzzling for rare words. Humans don't really make crazy fundamental errors that systems of translation make.

Marketing strategy or plan for translation devices considers a wide array of issues related to product marketing. The principal target for these devices is should be comprised of people travelling abroad and don't know the language of the foreign country they travel to. This presents the primary market since there is a lot of people who travel, the device will help them communicate freely without assistance from human translators. The feature of the product should provide portability and be easy to use. For the device to stand out among the many of the same types, an image for the device must be ensured to allow its identity to evoke customers' emotions. This is referred to as branding and positioning marketing strategy. Implementation of the strategy is one of the crucial stages of marketing; the company of the device must enforce and instil the right personal customer and selling service characteristics in their workers. The final stage of the marketing plan for this product must include control and evaluation to analyse if the objectives set for market planning are achieved.

Some of the prototypes that exist for Wireless Earbuds that Translate languages include pilot smart earpiece, Mymanu Clik, WT2 translating earphone, and Heya headphones. Heya headphones use Nuance's speech recognition technology and makes a combination with Monster Headphones. This product provides you with all the tools necessary to speak another language. They mimic a Bluetooth headset which fit comfortably on the year. They are considered special product since it has a smaller audience for the target, travellers.

WT2 is an earphone that translates languages in real time for hand-free and natural communication. The communication is enabled by the help of one app and two earphone translators, and the two people wear each side of the earphone. The technology gives you long-term and reduces hand communication. It enables one to mingle and build connections which are meaningful with local people and also when travelling. (Liu, 2014)

Mymanu Clik combines app and cloud to give a live translation for 37 languages. The processor enhances the experience. To do communication, the headset and two earphones are needed, so when speaking with people don't require them to perform any other thing than just listening to the output of the phone. Click also uses a pair of headphones and the buds utilise NFMI for connection, this gives more reliability than the Bluetooth link.

Pilot smart earpiece translator is a designed dual powerful app and noise cancellation microphone. It applies the speech synthesis machine translation to do a translation for the people. Pilot's smartphone app also includes a conference mode for multiple people to join the same the same conversation by wearing the earpiece. (Khurana, 2017)

From the above prototypes, a functional prototype can be brainstormed to include a watch that works in combination with ear pods. Instead of the headphone, headsets and smartphone apps, a simple portable easy to use watch can be used for the same purpose. This will make the best prototype since it will serve the same purpose in a simple way. Unlike the Mymanu Clik that works with only 37 languages, this prototype is made to accommodate over 130 languages that are preinstalled and are translated in real time. It works by the mechanism of recording and transmitting the result to its integral ear pod. When one speaks, the mic in the watch picks the words and transmits it to the ear pods. When the user responds, the words are translated to the watch where the speaker gets the translation on the watch.

Conclusion

Marketing plan and distribution for the product can be designed, but first, there are various external factors that can affect the marketing and distribution of the product. (Cravens, 2006) Demographics is concerned with the number of people who may need the product, all races, ages, genders, locations and economic status should be considered. For the social sector, positivity in the image is vital for the success of the product. For instance, to gain a favourable viewpoint socially, one can roll out a program to teach English to children in countries that are less developed countries to accompany the marketing and distribution. Technology must be reviewed regularly to ensure constant improvement of the product. This encounters the competitors in the market for the advantage of more extensive distribution. Among other factors that should be put into consideration during distribution and marketing plan include economics, legal and political issues, consumer behaviour, cultural issues and competitive factors. For the distribution strategy, the first thing is to select the market to where the products will be distributed. Develop distribution and marketing objectives like advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations. Branding and positioning is also another plan for distribution the product must have a name in this case 'Mumbo Jumbo' for which it will be identified. The last stage is to implement the plans and finally control and evaluate if the objectives are achieved.

References

Arizpe, E., Colomer, T., & Martinez-Roldan, C. (2014). Visual journeys through wordless narratives: An international inquiry with immigrant children and the arrival. A&C Black.

Liu, Y., & Hatzinakos, D. (2014, May). Human acoustic fingerprints: A novel b...