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Multicity's CEO & President Interviewed on CNNfn
Title: Multicity.com's
CEO & President Interviewed on
CNNfn: Digital Jam
Author:
Source: CNNfn:
Digital Jam
June 19, 2000
BRUCE FRANCIS, CNNfn ANCHOR, DIGITAL JAM: Ever wanted to impress
your friends by speaking other languages? Well, now you can.
MARY KATHLEEN FLYNN, CNNfn ANCHOR, DIGITAL JAM: There's a new chat
site that translates your writing into 18 different languages. The
site is Multicity and here with us now to show us how it works are
president Patrick Hanash and CEO Alain Hanash. Now this is Patrick.
Nope, this is Alain. This is Alain. This is Patrick. All right,
great. Tell us how this works.
ALAIN HANASH, CEO, MULTICITY: Well the idea behind Multicity is
really to try to break down the language barriers that exist on
the Internet. In a couple of years, you'll have more non-English
speakers on the Internet than actual English speakers. So we wanted
to develop something that will allow people with different language
skills to actually be able to communicate. The way it works is you
can join a chat room on any topic on our vast network on Multicity.com
and eventually talk in your native language. However, other people
participating in the same chat room will see it in their native
language, on the fly, in real time. So if you say hello, the Frenchman
will see bon jour and the Italian will see it in another language.
FRANCIS: Now, anyone who's tried their hand at translating knows
that some things just don't do very well and also chat room conversations
tend to be kind of loose and have a lot of colloquial terms.
FLYNN: And slang.
FRANCIS: Exactly. Patrick, tell me how you deal with those things.
PATRICK HANASH, PRESIDENT, MULTICITY: Well, what we're trying to
do with our technology, with our instant translating technology
is facilitate communication between people of different languages.
So it's not the question of solving the language barrier. I think
it's a question of enabling people to communicate and getting the
gist of what people are saying. Now the applications are very diverse.
People can use that technology to learn new languages but we've
been approached already by companies interested in using that technology
for global customer support, for example, where they can be sitting
in Texas and enabling customer support to their products across
the world using that technology.
ALAIN HANASH: And to just add to this, it's true that the translations
are never perfect. Languages are the most imperfect science out
there. It's very difficult to have perfect translation. However,
I think we at Multicity.com have at least lowered the barrier so
that people that would have never understood each other in a chat
room, can now communicate and participate in a conversation.
FLYNN: And Alain, where are you getting that technology from? I
mean have you written all these different translation programs or
have you bought it from somebody?
ALAIN HANASH: Well, we've developed all the communication aspect
of it and then we worked with a company called SYSTRAN on some of
the languages, but we will be adding a lot of different language
combinations in the upcoming future with other companies' translation
engines.
FRANCIS: Quickly, what's the business model behind this? How do
you make your money?
PATRICK HANASH: The way we make our money, first of all we distribute
our communications tools for free and it's based on ad revenue share,
ad banner share. That's the first revenue model. The second model
is licensing. We do license our technology to companies and organizations.
For example, we license our chat rooms to Trimark Pictures and the
United Nations. Red Hot Chili Pepper uses our technology and we
license it.
FLYNN: Alain, how are people using the chat rooms, briefly?
ALAIN HANASH: They're using it in every aspect you can imagine.
They're using it to learn new languages. They're using it to meet
new people. They're using it to find answers on homework, especially
the translation portion of it. It's unbelievable what people have
been able to do with this translation mechanism that we`ve put in
place.
FLYNN: All right, well best of luck and thanks for joining us,
Alain and Patrick Hanash from Multicity.
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