Sogou Launches Overseas Search, Creating Cross-Language Communication with AI Technology

Through Sogou's machine translation search engine, users could input Chinese words in its overseas search interface, which will automatically be translated into English, and retrieve relevant English information that will be translated into Chinese in real-time. Therefore, the users could have fast access to a dossier of relevant information abroad.

This is the first time in the world to combine the deep end-to-end neural machine translation system with search engines to create a brand-new product. Sogou Search has thus become the world's sole search engine with this feature. Sogou's CEO Wang Xiaochuan said: "Once cross-language communication becomes true, the story of The Tower of Babel will be rewritten."

Sogou Overseas Search to benefit each Chinese who is not proficient in English

According to Wang, Sogou Overseas Search has the powerful technological support from the "Sogou machine translation engine" which Sogou has developed independently. It is a type of artificial intelligence machine translation engine based on "end-to-end neural machine translation" (NMT) technology.

With NMT technology, Sogou Overseas Search can attain big data search in both English and Chinese languages, and the bilingual big data processing can lead to 80 million+ Chinese and English two-way translation data. Evaluated by various of criteria, Sogou Overseas Search is the leader in Chinese-English translation, scoring more than Google, Baidu and Youdao.

Speaking of Sogou Overseas Search's significance, Wang cited The Babylon Tower of Babel, a story in The Old Testament of The Bible. Wang said: "If cross-language communication is made possible, the civilization of our living globe will be rewritten, with less wars and the emergence of a civilization deriving from increasing exchanges of nationalities."

Through Sogou Overseas Search, users can search for any happenings of their interest, including the professional medical terms "artemisinin" and "cell immunotherapy", as well as Lady Gaga and "The Three-Body Problem", and have easy access to all medical, scientific and cultural information in the world.

At the same time, Wang noted that translation is a very delicate job. As there are new trendy words being invented every day, Sogou's search engine could cater to the changing trends and come out with innovations of new products.

Looking to the future, Sogou Corp will intensify cooperation with Tsinghua University, inputting more machine resources. Sogou Overseas Search is set to continuously optimize quality of translation, mete out multi-level translation pages, and integrate the overseas search results with web search results, so that everyone could see the whole world in real time and in Chinese.

Sogou Corp has taken leader's pole in AI innovations in China

In 2016, the new round of technology innovations began to evolve, focusing on artificial intelligence (AI), internet of things (IOT), intelligent hardware and cloud-based architecture. As a pioneer of artificial intelligence in China, Sogou is stepping up its AI innovations in translation, Q&A and chat function, and is leading the search industry, with growing values generated by its existing products integrated with AI technology. Also, the company, leveraging its huge user base in both computers and mobile devices in China, has taken the leader's position, outpacing its competitors in accelerating new products.

According to official data, Sogou's platform accounts for 14.2 percent of all search volume in China, making it the second biggest search engine in the country. Its mobile search is particularly welcomed by younger users. In 2014, Tencent's capital injection and its QQ and WeChat entrance opening to Sogou, enabled Sogou's access to Tencent's exclusive resources.

Lately, a parade of new products, including Weixin Search, Zhihu Search, Sogou Mingyi, Overseas Search, and Academic Search, has enriched Sogou Corp's search functions, and fortified the company's competitiveness in the marketplace with differentiated high-quality search content.

Technology-driven Sogou is increasingly taking the position as China's Google. Since 2015, Google has launched some projects with Sogou. At the end of 2016, Google's Chrome browser began to recommend Sogou search on its boot page to Chinese users.

In April 2016, Sogou donated 180 million yuan to Tsinghua University, jointly setting up Tian Gong Institute of Artificial Intelligence Computing. Later on, their AI research and development achievements were brought to Sogou's innovations and gave birth to a spate of new high-tech Sogou products including voice recognition, voice correction, machine interpretation and smart sharing in 2016.

According to Sogou's CEO Wang, AI technology is redefining the earth we inhabit, and redefining the living value of people. Technological advancements in machines have freed people from labor, creating opportunities for people to produce greater values. Wang expressed his willingness to make Sogou a pioneer and pacesetter in AI research and development, destined to integrate the machine intelligent civilization with the human world, in the hope that people will become more free and more innovative.