The Captioned World
a sci-fi short story
[Disclaimer]
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. This work should not be mistaken for a news story. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual companies and institutes is purely coincidental.
SEOUL AND SUWON, South Korea -- Vladimir Petrov is an early bird. He arrives at Samsung Electronics' Suwon headquarters at 6 a.m. every weekday. The 48-year-old Samsung research director participates in his first meeting at 7 a.m. with his data analysts and software engineers. He wears a badge-like small device on his left chest. As Mr. Petrov talks in Russian, the device generates real-time translated Korean text in a notebook-sized holographic screen in front of him. His Korean staff are also equipped with the same devices. They produce Russian text in the air when they explain to Mr. Petrov the result of the previous day's consumer data analysis. The conversation in the "captions" is intense, lengthy and smooth. There is no pause or a mistake in translation during the one-hour meeting. "I have never thought about getting a job at a Korean firm." said the Russian scholar who received a Ph.D. degree in computer science and applied mathematics from Lomonosov Moscow State University. "I don't speak Korean at all. I am bad at English. Just 5 years ago, such an opportunity was unthinkable." Mr. Petrov told me, your humble correspondent, while having his words translated to Korean on the holographic screen in real time. "I picked up some Korean words and expressions and that's enough for me. My young sons have learned Korean very quickly here and easily hang out with their Korean buddies. But I think that I am just as able to communicate as my kids."
The caption generating machines, which are widely called "DCA"s(Digital Communication Aid), are transforming not just highly skilled jobs like Mr. Petrov's but also manual labors in the nation. When you go to coffee shops and restaurants in Seoul, you are very likely to encounter severs from Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and China who talk to you through DCA captions. At numerous construction sites, foreign excavator operators use DCA-connected walkie-talkies to promptly understand the instructions of their Korean supervisors. According to the government statistics, the number of migrant workers in South Korea jumped by 375 percent in the last three years. The number of South Koreans who land jobs abroad also grew 212 percent in the same period. "My kindergartener daughter says there are two kinds of people in the world: those with the captions and the others without them." said Ban Jung-hwan, a labor economics professor at Soojang University. "DCAs have changed the flow of the global workforce profoundly. I think that in five years, the concept of language skills and language barriers will become obsolete." Prof. Kim added that one of every two lecturers at his university is now from another country -- primarily China or India.
DCAs work on a cloud service. The devices' communication parts constantly transmit users' voices to central Artificial Intelligence servers that are located in other countries and receive translated texts from the AI. The global market for the caption-generating service is dominated by two firms: Google and Apple. The two tech giants now simultaneously translate more than 100 languages. Nav. and Kao, the two largest internet platform firms in South Korea, also offer similar services, but they struggle with many technical constraints. Nav. only covers Japanese, English, Chinese, Malaysian. Kao's translation is considered to have achieved a work-level quality only in English and Japanese. Nav. and Kao's combined domestic market share for the DCA cloud service is estimated to be less than 10 percent. Google opens its translation service to third-party DCA hardware makers, just like its Android phone operating system. Samsung is the world's largest manufacturer of Google-backed DCAs and LG ranks 4th. Korean telecom companies such as KT and LG Uplus are happy to market the DCAs. Since DCAs need internet connectivity, the telecoms enjoy selling a huge amount of separate service plans to DCA users. Google does not charge users for translation. Instead it collects a small fee from the telecom firms -- on average two US dollars monthly per account. Apple provides its caption service exclusively to its "iTalk"(the name of Apple's DCA device line) users and strictly bans other DCAs. The iTalk service is an essential feature of Apple's own ecosystem. Captions are free of charge if you buy any Apple product such as iPhone or Macbook.
The caption service makes a growing number of people gravely concerned. The Translation engines listen to conversations. If the system is hacked in order to spy on people or the dialogue data is stolen and falls into the wrong hands, this will be a catastrophic privacy infringement. Google and Apple have pledged that once translation work is done, they will immediately delete the conversation data in central servers. The companies also receive rigorous cyber security assessment every month from a special expert panel commissioned by the US government. But many still remain skeptical about such "failproof" protections. The issue put the tech giants in bitter dispute with other countries. South Korea's communications authorities last year demanded that Google and Apple should build data centers in Korea to translate Koreans' conversations. The government also insisted that the US firms should undergo security audits regularly from a state agency. Apple gave in to the pressure and promised to expand its Korean server facilities to handle the data from Korean iTalk users. Google chose to fight with the state. Two weeks ago, Korean prosecutors warned that the company would face indictments for the violation of the Personal Information Protection Act. "Google and Apple should learn a lesson from Boeing and Airbus. The passenger aircraft makers control the global market in a virtual duopoly. But they willingly work with aviation regulators in other countries, " explained Jung Kyung-kyu, a policy director of Open Net Korea, a nonprofit organization that specializes in the advocacy of internet users' rights. "Google and Apple are now Boeing and Airbus in the global communication sector. They have to win the trust of the consumer countries to continue their business" Mr. Jung added.
Political controversies are emerging. The Ministry of Justice recently angered many Korean teachers, as it was reported considering abolishing the mandatory Korean proficiency test for certain naturalization applicants who have notable achievement in the science and technology sector. The enraged teachers claimed that this measure could diminish the importance of Korean language education as an instrument of social integration. "For an immigrant, learning the host country's language can be a proof of loyalty to the new community that he or she wants to join, " stressed Kim Sun-hee, a spokesperson of Korean Teachers Association. "Being a Korean citizen means that the person can speak Korean and understand subtle cultural contexts embedded in the language. If people rely on machine translators for the qualification, this will destroy one of our most distinctive human characteristics, " she said. Ms. Kim's organization last March successfully blocked the Education Ministry's attempt to dramatically lower the minimum score required in the Test of Proficiency in Korean(TOPIK) for international students applying for Korean colleges. DCA advocates argue that such reactions are extremist. Kim Sung-jong, a lawmaker who supports loosening language requirements for acquisition of citizenship, joked that the aversion to DCAs is like banning subtitles of foreign films and TV dramas on the grounds that learning languages is crucial to being human. "Given the excruciatingly high costs of adult language education and loss of efficiency due to language barriers, it is impossible for us to go without DCAs. We are living in 'the captioned world'. No one can deny the reality, " Kim sighed and smiled.
But probably, the cost of adopting highly advanced machine translation is coming due. The National Human Rights Commission of Korea recently issued a warning that online hate speeches targeting DCA users have increased significantly over the last two years, apparently due to the genophobic, anti-immigration sentiment. The commission urged social media to immediately remove slurs relating to DCAs. The best-known example could be "Caption Byungsin"(literally meaning "a moron with cations"). Lee Soo-jung, a middle school teacher in Suwon, told me that she was stunned to see her pupils mock philiphino school cafeteria workers. "The kids pretended that DCA captions from the lunch ladies were not visible and kept saying 'what are you talking about? Are you a dumb?'" she recalled. Mr. Petrov at Samsung admits that his caption generator is not as helpful as he expected in maintaining a good relationship with the company executives. "They are not comfortable with me speaking Russian. One vice president told me that I should learn to speak Korean or at least English to show respect for the senior managers, " he shrugged. "I first thought that my DCA might have errors and mistranslate my words to the guys. I checked the machine and found that it worked very well. What bothered them was just me making captions." Mr. Petrov turned off his DCA in front of me. He uttered a Korean phrase that he has become familiar with. "Chabyul-i-ye-yo, Chabyul-i-ye-yo."(This is discrimination, this is discrimination.) (END)
