Hyundai Motor Group is developing an in-house machine translator to facilitate communication between employees across different languages around the world while dispelling security worries from using third-party translators.

The project was disclosed in the conglomerate’s online PR channel HMG Journal, where it introduced Kim Jun-seok, who was scouted from Naver Labs to join HMG as senior research engineer last February. Kim, who is the man behind the development of Naver’s translation service Papago, earned his fame in the area of natural language processing (NLP). He is now working at Hyundai Motor Company’s AI-focused R&D center AIR Lab.

HMG aims to have as refined a translator as Papago to address security concerns that could happen when employees rely on external translators such as Google Translator or Papago. Stand-alone translators introduced to HMG many years ago are seldom used by employees due to low quality and performance.

In an interview with HMG Journal, Kim said an in-house translator can tie up with a messenger or an email system for employees, adding that a specialized translation app programming interface can be applied to business units handling lots of technology documents.

Market watchers also expect HMG’s project to develop an independent translator to help improve the quality of an in-car voice recognition AI assistant device. Hyundai Motor equipped its new Sonata sedans with Kakaoi, an artificial intelligence platform from Kakao.

By Lee Jae-cheol and Minu Kim

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