The Voice Behind the Voice

by Liu Haile

On June 8， just one day before the 18th Meeting of the Council of Heads of Member States of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization（SCO） commenced in Qingdao， a coastal city in Chinas eastern Shandong Province， Zhang Chen， a volunteer from Qingdao University of Science and Technology， demonstrated to reporters at the summits media center how a white multilingual handset works.

“This equipment is called YeeBox， with which users can translate their voice into six languages including English， Russian， Mongolian， Persian and Hindi，” she grinned. “All one needs is to press a button， and the gadget can connect to a multilingual call center， where interpreters translate real-time what the user said into any of the six languages he or she chose.”

The YeeBox and the multilingual call center are provided by Global Tone Communication Technology Co.， Ltd. （GTCOM）， the official language services provider for the SCO Qingdao summit.

The summit gathered guests from SCO member states such as India， Kazakhstan， Kyrgyzstan， Pakistan， Russia， Tajikistan， and Uzbekistan and observer countries including Afghanistan， Belarus， Iran and Mongolia. Language services were vital for them to cross language barriers and communicate better with each other during the summit.

According to Wang Xiaodong， vice president of GTCOM， more than 200 sets of such equipment have been deployed at places like railway station， airport， customs， and venues for the SCO summit. “If necessary， more YeeBoxes will be deployed to provide real-time interpretation services，” he added. Besides the YeeBox， they also provided a kind of AI-based translation machine that can automatically provide interpretation services in 35 languages.

At the multilingual call center for the SCO summit that is located at the Qingdao Hi-tech Industrial Development Zone， dozens of interpreters were busy answering calls that poured in via the YeeBox. “We have about 200 interpreters working for the SCO summit at the call center，” Wang said. “Some of them are teachers from colleges and universities. They work in three shifts around the clock. Currently， we handle hundreds of calls daily， and the number is expected to rocket when the two-day summit begins.”

The SCO Qingdao summit， which ran from June 9 to 10， occurred at a time when the world is in need of concerted action to address challenges and threats ranging from regional conflicts to the spread of terrorism， from populism to unilateralism， and must advance economic globalization and improve global governance to benefit all. To this end， many representatives at the event voiced their support for closer partnership under the SCO framework. It was interpreters， whether on-site or remote， who helped make their voice heard by more.