Please describe your proposed solution.
Sofie is from Benin Republique, a French-speaking country in the sub-Saharan region of West Africa, Sofie mistakenly stumbles upon content on youtube that discusses Project Catalyst, its impact, and how to engage. This content is one of those Catalyst/Cardano expansion and onboarding projects which was funded in one of the Funding rounds. The presentation and style of the video are so thrilling, such that it captures Sofie's attention, and Sofie can't wait to be in the next Project Catalyst townhall.
It's Wednesday 6 pm local time in Benin Republique, and despite having a lot to do that day, Sofie has cleared her calendar to be sure she makes it on time to the project Catalyst town hall. Sofie enthusiastically joins the call, and she can't wait to join the conversation. But to Sofies disappointment she doesn't understand what is going on in there, and although she can attest to the fact that the community is very lively and seems like the kind of community she would love to be part of, she unfortunately does not understand English and as such cannot engage, and neither can her contribution be heard. Put yourself in Sofie's shoes, what would you have done?
(a) Stay and keep wasting your time In the community while you do not understand what is going on there
(b) Find a few French contents about Cardano/Catalyst and the town halls to follow up on the engagements in the community.
(c) Leave and probably never return.
Option C, most time seems to be the most logical option to persons like Sofie who step into most of our Town Halls for the first time and do not speak English. Among persons who come to Catalyst town halls and go back after the first time, language will probably be among the top reasons. This problem continues to affect the catalyst community and there is therefore a need for tools that will help improve this process, without these tools more marketing campaigns and outreaches will lead to lesser retention and participation in our meetings. This is why we are proposing the Real-Time AI-Language translation tool For Catalyst communities.
WHAT IS CATALYST WITHOUT COLLABORATION?
Our proposal seeks to develop a tool that will help the Catalyst community to keep people like Sofie who leave the community because of a lack of proper understanding of English. But that's not all, our project seeks to help cross-pollination and interaction among members of the community with other communities. Currently, as an English speaker, you cannot attend effectively a Swahili Catalyst town hall for example, but I thought the essence of the Catalyst community is collaboration. how can we collaborate effectively when we can't understand each other? Communication is impeding our full experience as a community, and this is what this proposal seeks to address. We are yet to experience the full potential of human experience when and where our collaboration has not been fully harnessed. This is why this tool is very important because it speaks to the very heart of what makes us "catalysts"
PROJECT TECHNICALITIES
For this phase of the project, we will be focusing on demonstrating this concept in about 2-3 languages. The concept is that when users come to the town hall, they can install an extension or we will integrate an API into our Zoom meeting which allows users to toggle the language they want, now this is what will be happening, using Natural Language processing as conversations are ongoing in the town hall. Our tool will be translating it in almost real-time to the participant in the toggled language. The following simple algorithm will be followed
(I) Speech is converted to text
(ii) text is segmented into small blocks
(iii) Blocks are applied over a translation algorithm (The latest Transformer based translation models will be utilized)
(iv) Translated speech displayed in the toggled language
(vi) Translated text displayed in the user interface, ensuring it is synchronized with the ongoing conversation or with minute lapse.
This way a user like Sofie will be able to attend Catalyst town hall meetings in real time even when he/she does not understand English. Also, we will be able to cross-pollinate with other regional town halls, as we will be able to at least interact and engage with these town halls, despite our language deficiencies. The effect of this means more collaborations between regional town halls, which of course is not just a challenge objective for us, but in clear alignment with the theme of the fund 10.
CONTEXT SETTING
For some context settings, there are thousands of languages all over the world, and while we aim to see our project get there, for the current phase of our solution, we will only focus on English, French, and Spanish. The success of this tool will see us expand this solution into other languages that will be relevant to the community and it will be open-sourced, so communities can adapt the tool according to their language as well. The other thing worth noting is that this tool will be a Zoom extension and/or Zoom's API, Zoom is currently the most utilized platform for Catalyst town halls, in future proposals we can seek to integrate it into other meeting tools as well.
The project will first be deployed on catalyst continuous testnet, it is when it has been fully effected that we will now move it to the general community or mainet for community usage.
ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN
Here is the architectural flow chart design for the proposed solution
How does your proposed solution address the challenge and what benefits will this bring to the Cardano ecosystem?
So let's see what the campaign brief says and how it relates to our solution
Catalyst Systems Improvements are proposals that have or will have a high likelihood of advancing the state of the art for innovation platform for Cardano offered by Project Catalyst. Proposals entered in this category must demonstrate improvements in one or more of the following areas:
- Systemic improvements (Technical or Procedural) that streamline or otherwise enhance Project Catalyst processes.
So part of the challenge setting brief is for technical or procedural improvements that streamline or enhance the project catalyst process, ours is a technical project that will improve the Catalyst process, making it much more inclusive for participants from all over the world to participate.
Also part of the requirement is that the first product will be deployed on the catalyst testnet, which of course is clearly spelled out in the project description for us, showing clearly how relevant this is to the challenge brief.
But it doesn't stop there, this is one of the few proposals that doesn't only speak to the challenge brief but to the fund theme, which is about collaboration. Our tool is answering the question of how we can better collaborate as the catalyst community.
Generally, this tool will help the community to become more inclusive, will foster collaboration, and will make onboarding to Cardano communities much easier than it currently is.
How do you intend to measure the success of your project?
The successful development and deployment of the tool to the Catalyst testnet
The successful deployment of the solution to the catalyst mainet
The number of Catalyst meetings/events that this solution will be used in
The quality of interactions that will tool will foster
The amount of cross-pollinated town hall meetings and events as a result of this tool
The number of users of this tool in meetings over a time
The frequency of usage of the tool in the catalyst community
The number of Cardano communities that will be utilizing the tool
Please describe your plans to share the outputs and results of your project?
Milestone 1: UI/UX Design and prototyping
Timescale: 1 month
Milestone 2: Tool Development and Refinement
Time scale: 4 month
Milestone 3: Product Testing
Timescale: 1 month
Milestone 4: Testnet Deployment and Initial Engagement
Timescale: 2 months
Milestone 5: Partnerships and Outreach
Timescale: 1 month
Milestone 6: Final Release and Long-Term Support
Timescale: 1 month