Jackson Dodge, Jeenie's Head of Growth spoke with CardRates.com about Jeenie's innovative approach to interpreting and about the limitations of AI.
Jackson Dodge, Jeenie’s Head of Growth, spoke to Cardrates.com about how Jeenie’s Direct to Interpreter D2I model is revolutionizing the interpreting industry.
Jeenie’s D2I model…
The norm in the translation industry has been to directly employ some interpreters and sub-contract others from third-party staffing companies. Dodge says this results in a lot of “cooks in the kitchen” and very slow scaling.
Jeenie, on the other hand, directly contracts its almost 14,000 interpreters. “By directly contracting our interpreters, we remove all intermediary steps, which allows us to control quality right down to the individual interpreter and interpreting session,” said Dodge.
“We have a single platform, no matter what the modality is, whether that’s a web-based connection, an audio call, or a video call. There’s a single infrastructure in the background, automatically routing those calls to an interpreter without the need for operators or call centers,” said Jackson.
The platform enables users to schedule an interpreter in 300 languages and offers access to interpreters on-demand in 70 languages, including rare and indigenous languages.
Limitations of AI…
One of the most overlooked aspects of language is that accents, dialects and cultural variations matter. For example, there’s a significant difference between Spanish spoken in Spain and Spanish spoken in various Latin American countries and regions.
As of now, AI-based translation tools, such as Google Translate, cannot pick up on the subtleties between dialects and often result in inaccurate translations. Only a native speaker or a professional interpreter would be able to mitigate such issues.
Jackson noted that some AI-based tools will commonly show bias to certain languages and usually do a better job of translating from English than translating from another language into English. A recent study conducted by Mass General Brigham Hospital compared translation accuracy between AI translation tools and human interpreters, and demonstrated that AI tools were 72% accurate when interpreting from English into Mandarin, and only 30% accurate when translating from Mandarin to English.
Jeenie’s goal is to become ubiquitous…
Jeenie’s current business model caters to a number of industries, including healthcare, legal, and banking, among others.
Jackson pointed out that healthcare is of particular importance because ensuring clear and accurate communication between healthcare provider and patient can be lifesaving.
Jeenie’ ease of use and mobile access also makes it ideal for travelers and businesses. “Our goal is that Jeenie will become ubiquitous and that language is no longer a barrier to communication,” said Jackson.
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