“It Interprets Dialects and Even Seven Foreign Languages”... AI Specialized for Shipbuilding Unveiled

[Financial News] Flitto, a company specializing in AI data and solutions, is building ‘Otok,’ a customized AI interpretation and translation solution for Hanwha Ocean and Hanwha Systems. The solution will support smooth communication among workers by learning data on shipbuilding terminology, slang, dialects, and seven foreign languages.
According to industry sources on the 16th, Otok is an AI interpretation and translation solution tailored to shipbuilding sites. Hanwha Ocean’s AX Business Division planned it based on field requirements, and Hanwha Systems and Flitto jointly built it. The solution is intended to address the difficulty of immediate communication between Korean and foreign workers, as well as the risk of reduced understanding of work, caused by the frequent use of site-specific slang and strongly accented dialects.
To facilitate communication at worksites, Hanwha Ocean collected data on shipbuilding terminology, slang, and dialects used in the field and organized requirements reflecting actual usage environments and work characteristics. Based on the field data and requirements provided by Hanwha Ocean, Flitto developed a customized glossary and enhanced its AI translation model.
Using this data, the company trained voice data for seven major languages, including Korean, English, Vietnamese, and Thai. The solution’s practicality was improved by raising the recognition rate for on-site speech with a Gyeongsang-do accent, which had been difficult to recognize during the early stages of development.
Based on feedback from field users and test results, Hanwha Ocean specified the necessary functions and worked with Hanwha Systems and Flitto to develop features tailored to shipyard working environments. A representative feature is the ‘five-level audio pickup adjustment’ function, which controls noise according to each setting, including work areas, break rooms, offices, and quiet interview spaces. The solution also supports more than 10 customized functions, including one-on-one conversations, group chats, text translation, document translation, image translation, and real-time multilingual interpretation and translation for training and lectures.
For safety training for foreign workers, the companies established an interpretation and translation system that simultaneously delivers instructors’ remarks in each multinational worker’s native language. In addition, group chats configured according to users’ language settings strengthen the system for issuing work instructions and submitting reports between site managers and foreign workers.
The effects of applying the solution in actual worksites are also becoming visible. During pilot operations, the usage rate among foreign workers reached approximately 96%, demonstrating its effectiveness in the field. As partner companies continued to request the solution, Hanwha Ocean and Flitto expanded its distribution to their workers after integrating employee ID systems.
Flitto CEO Lee Jung-soo said, “This project, which overcame dialects and slang, combines Hanwha Ocean’s accumulated experience and language data from shipbuilding sites with Flitto’s AI interpretation and translation technology. We will continue expanding the supported languages, including Cambodian and Sinhala, and take the lead in removing language barriers in high-risk industrial workplaces by advancing speech synthesis technology.”

[email protected] Jang Min-kwon Reporter