Zoom on its way to revolutionizing video conferencing yet again

Zoom has proved itself to be one of the top video conferencing apps, especially in the last two years. It revolutionized the process of getting into an online meeting by making it as simple and frictionless as possible. Now, the company has invested in a technology that could change the game in online communication.

Live translation startup Kites GmbH is on its way to being bought by Zoom for a fee that is yet to be revealed. Kites will aid in the development and integration of machine translation to the Zoom Cloud meetings app. The goal of the collaboration is to dissolve the language barrier between people with different language backgrounds.

This is what Zoom’s President of Product and Engineering, Velchamy Sankarlingam had to say:

Kites & Zoom

Kites is a small startup company of twelve people, and it was founded in 2015 by Dr. Alex Waibel and Dr. Sebastian Stüker. The team will be merged with Zoom’s engineering department but will specifically work on machine translation.

Stüker and Waibel shared a comment stating their positive views on the merger:



Zoom already has a feature that helps with translation in conversations called Simultaneous Interpretations. It enables video call participants to invite a live translator and have real-time translation throughout a meeting. The app lowers down the speech of the speaker and gives the spotlight to the translator’s voice.

What Zoom and Kites are probably hoping to achieve here is translation in the form of live captions. This will essentially give you the option to have translation without the necessity of hiring a person. If successful, this innovation could be a monumental advancement in online communication, and Zoom will have once again proven its top spot in the market.