Zoom has announced that it’s acquiring a company known as Kites (short for Karlsruhe Information Technology Solutions), which has worked on creating real-time translation and transcription software. Zoom says the acquisition is a move to help it make communicating with people who speak different languages easier, and that it’s looking to add translation capabilities to its video conferencing app.
According to its site, Kites began at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and its technology was originally developed to act as in-classroom translation for students who needed help understanding the English or German their professors were lecturing in.
Zoom already has real-time transcriptions, but it’s limited to people who are talking in English. On a support page, Zoom also makes it clear that its current live transcription feature may not meet certain accuracy requirements. The company says it’s considering opening a research center in Germany, where the Kites team will be staying.