Client background
HY-C has been providing innovative home improvement products since 1947, ranging from chimney covers and firewood storage racks to cast iron fireplace accessories and wood-burning furnaces. The company is dedicated to enhancing home safety and sustainability, working with international partners to ensure the highest quality for its products.
Languages
English, Chinese (Simplified), and Chinese (Traditional).
Challenge
As HY-C expands its global operations, it frequently collaborates with factories and manufacturing partners overseas, particularly in China. Communication plays a pivotal role in product development, quality assurance, and resolving critical issues in real-time. However, the language barrier between HY-C’s English-speaking team and their Chinese partners has introduced inefficiencies, especially during product development and QA processes.
Relying on email exchanges for cross-border collaboration often results in delays, with responses sometimes taking up to 24 hours for issues that could be resolved within minutes on a call. The alternative—frequent overseas travel—is not only time-consuming but also incurs significant costs. In-person meetings and hiring interpreters for weekly calls also proved challenging, with high costs and difficulty in coordinating schedules.
HY-C needed an on-demand, 24/7 real-time translation solution that could support their fast-paced work environment, ensuring seamless communication with their international partners without the need for constant travel or expensive, hard-to-coordinate interpreting services.
Solution
To address these challenges, HY-C partnered with Langfinity to implement its real-time voice-to-text translation solution, seamlessly integrated into their weekly operations. Langfinity’s AI-powered solution enabled HY-C to conduct efficient, real-time conversations with their Chinese partners, eliminating the reliance on delayed email communications and reducing the need for in-person meetings.
Langfinity’s ability to provide accurate translations in both Simplified and Traditional Chinese allowed HY-C’s team to instantly clarify questions, resolve issues, and collaborate on product development and quality assurance, ensuring smooth communication without any language barriers.
Impact
Faster Time to Market: Before adopting Langfinity, misunderstandings or unanswered questions during product development often required waiting 24-48 hours for responses via email, slowing down progress. With Langfinity’s on-demand, 24/7 real-time translation, HY-C can now resolve critical product issues and clarify details in minutes during multilingual live conversations. This has significantly shortened their time-to-market, enabling faster iterations and more agile product launches.
Significant Cost and Time Savings: HY-C previously relied on frequent international travel to overcome language barriers, incurring significant costs. Langfinity’s real-time translation service eliminated the need for constant travel and costly interpreters. This resulted in reduction in travel costs and saved approximately two hours per week on back-and-forth written exchanges. The savings have allowed HY-C to reinvest in strategic business initiatives, enhancing operational efficiency.
Enhanced Collaboration with International Partners: Langfinity’s real-time translation capabilities have improved HY-C’s multilingual collaboration with their international partners, particularly in China. Previously, language barriers caused delays and misunderstandings in product development and QA processes. Now, HY-C’s teams can collaborate effortlessly across languages, resulting in smoother, more efficient cross-border partnerships and a streamlined multilingual product development process.
Increased Operational Efficiency: By eliminating delays from email exchanges and the need for expensive, hard-to-schedule interpreters, HY-C has improved its operational efficiency. Real-time communication via Langfinity enables the team to address urgent concerns immediately, preventing project delays and ensuring faster, better-informed decisions. This efficiency has helped HY-C stay competitive in its fast-paced industry.
Conclusion
By partnering with Langfinity, HY-C has overcome critical language barriers, enabling faster, more efficient collaboration with their international partners. Langfinity’s real-time translation technology has streamlined HY-C’s multilingual product development process, improved operational efficiency, and reduced the need for costly travel and interpretation services, helping HY-C maintain its high standards of performance and innovation in the global market.
