Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1505114
24 cgw j u ly • a u g u s t • s e p t e m b e r 2 0 2 3 W ith international media and entertainment con- tent surging in popularity across the globe, the need for accurate and efficient translation has never been more urgent. We connected with Tim Jung, the CEO of XL8, to learn how his company's innovative ma- chine translation technology is breaking language barriers by har- nessing the power of AI. C G W : T E L L U S A L I T T L E A B O U T Y O U R P R O F E S S I O N A L B A C K G R O U N D & C A R E E R P A T H . Tim Jung: Aer majoring in computer science for my undergrad, I served as a military officer in the Korean army for two and a half years. During this time, I was fortunate to attend a part-time busi- ness school and earn an MBA degree. Later, I landed a job at Sam- sung Electronics, where I led development of the user experience framework for Tizen, a versatile operating system for smart devices. Aer five years at Samsung, I returned to academia to pursue more in-depth research by starting a PhD program in computer sci- ence at Columbia University. My research at Columbia focused on optimizing distribution of complex workloads across small devices and large computers seamlessly, particularly for natural language processing (NLP) applications. Aer completing my PhD within four years in 2015, I spent another four years at Google Search by tech- nically leading and managing engineering teams. During this period, I created and led the largest collaborative project between Google Search and Google Maps, called "Events Search on Maps." All these experiences eventually made me believe that I can build my own startup and excel at it. C G W : W H A T L E D Y O U T O F O R M X L 8 , A N D W H A T T Y P E S O F P R O D U C T S & S E R V I C E S D O E S I T O F F E R ? Tim Jung: In 2019, I founded XL8 because I saw the opportunity in media localization. AI has been quickly advancing to aid humans with complicated tasks that were believed impossible in the past. I started drawing a startup success formula in my head by applying my expertise from past experiences. While big tech companies like Google invest a lot of effort in AI, no one was developing AI technolo- gies for media content localization. That's where XL8 comes in—we specialize in video translation and offer unique solutions to stream- line the localization process. Our primary product, MediaCAT, is a cloud-based platform de- signed to help language service providers (LSPs) work more effi- ciently. LSPs are oen commissioned by major OTT (over-the-top) streaming companies, such as Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu, to trans- late and dub their content. With MediaCAT, LSPs can quickly trans- late subtitles and make any necessary modifications for technical or creative purposes. The beauty of MediaCAT is that it saves time and money by auto- matically generating timecodes and transcripts from unscripted vid- eos and translates content into multiple languages simultaneously. BREAKING LANGUAGE BARRIERS WITH AI MAXIMIZING ACCURACY AND EFFICIENCY WITH MACHINE TRANSLATION TECHNOLOGY.