Voithru — Protocol Economy Changing the Shape of the New Media Translation
Voithru Dreams the Future of New Media Content without Language Barriers
The late 2010s were the period where we saw a remarkable growth of the new media. In South Korea, YouTube’s monthly active users (MAU), which has been increasing rapidly each year, recorded 29 million, reaching 60% of the total population in Korea as of 2019. And, creator(YouTuber) became the third most desired occupation among elementary school kids, surpassing doctors in the ranking. This growth of new media, along with the globalization of Korean content, has accelerated the trend of Korean YouTubers creating content for both Korean and international viewers.
However, it was only a handful of Korean YouTubers who could successfully attract a non-Korean audience. The rest could not enjoy the benefit of this new trend due to language barriers. Some may find it odd but this has to do with subtitles. Translating subtitles requires much more than just syncing with the original language. Indeed, it requires expertise in original and target languages which only a few possess. But, the traditional translation market structure could not absorb this demand coming from new media creators due to its nature — in most cases, the translation itself takes more than three days. This certainly is not favorable for the new media where 90% of the content is consumed within three days after the publishing, which requires the subtitles to be translated ASAP.
Voithru, which has been recently invested by Hashed, is a company that developed a solution which creates subtitles for the hearing impaired with its own Speech to Text(STT) technology. With its technology, Voithru ranked #1 in the speech recognition competition hosted by Naver. In the mid-2019, Voithru launched Jamake, a subtitle translation and production service for the new media creators, and achieved 80% market share by acquiring exclusive partnerships with Sandbox, DIA TV, Leferi, and Treasure Hunter. Also, Voithru provides cheaper quotes than the existing translators yet faster output — subtitles are completed mostly within 12 hours. There are 1,200+ active translators on the platform, and 2,400+ translators waiting in line to be part of Voithru platform.
Voithru’s lower translation rate and innovation in speed are achieved through the gig economy. In the past, only a few in-house translators provided the service, Voithru’s Jamake slices a video into shorter segments and assigns these short clips to multiple freelance translators. This reduces the burden of each translator so that he/she could complete the part within 30 minutes. And, the review process also follows the same pattern. The parallel workflow structure makes it possible for subtitles to be translated into multiple languages and delivered to the creators regardless of the video length.
Evolution of Gig Economy to Protocol Economy through Blockchain
Gig economy is built upon a contract between individuals or a contract between a company and an individual. On the other hand, the protocol economy is driven by smart contracts on the blockchain. This allows the protocol itself to manage contracts, thereby ensuring reliability and effectiveness.
Earlier this year, Voithru entered the Japanese market, and it is preparing for market penetration into the Southeast Asia region. Taking into account that the content business is truly global, Voithru can lower the translation rate by securing the translators directly from the target market where content will be consumed. Also, the direct translation pipeline from these markets will enable Voithru to adapt to the evolving trend and to be free from time zone differences.
Most translators working with Voithru are getting paid in Korean Won for they are based in Korea. Within the near future, the overseas translators will increase, and this will inevitably lead to increased fees and operations costs. Indeed, this is a common problem that many global services encounter due to transnational remittances. The incumbent SWIFT system is not suitable for services like Voithru where a relatively small amount of funds should be paid frequently. In order to resolve this issue, stable coins pegged to multiple currencies could be used. Through the use of stable coins, we expect a significant improvement in the area of remittance fee. And, as the incumbent platform and smart contract integrate, we forecast increased levels of automation and efficiency that would reduce operations costs.
Protocol economy can be used to increase the platform’s reliability and to reduce disputes related to the service. In the gig economy, preventing high-quality workers from producing low-quality outputs is highly important. Therefore, we need a mechanism where continuous feedback, evaluations, and rewards could occur. But, if the platform provider brings that process in-house, it will suffer on the scalability front. If Voithru were to do all feedback in-house, it would require Voithru to hire more evaluators as the number of translators increases. And, those translators will raise questions regarding the quality of centralized evaluation. In the end, mutual evaluation within the translator community will be essential, and an open database that stores such feedback and evaluations in a transparent manner will be required — blockchain. If a peer review system is created within the community using an appropriate reward system, there will be no need for internal staff in charge of translation work to be working on how the evaluation system performs. Also, the increased transparency and reliability will allow the service provider and the community to grow together.
As businesses relying on their community increase, the networks are growing alongside. We could easily think of YouTube, Uber, and Airbnb for how this change is happening. These platforms are indeed massively market expansionary — Uber or Airbnb started addressing markets that are greater than the existing taxi or hotel markets. Hashed believes the networks can grow further if these platforms could become more transparent with their data open to the public. We still have a long way to go, but we plan to continue to support entrepreneurs who share the vision of radical efficiency and fair distribution of wealth.
Please visit — en.jamake.io
