Sotto — Cultural Communication Companion

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Sotto, a real-time cultural communication companion for non-native English speakers in global workplace meetings

The silence after "Does anyone disagree?" in a Zoom room is rarely empty. It is full of people mid translating, mid calculating the social cost of pushing back in a culture where disagreement is taught as a wound. They wait. The decision moves on without them. Sotto is built for that one second.

Today's AI communication tools are all text. Grammarly fixes your writing after the fact. Copilot drafts your emails. Otter transcribes the meeting you already lost. None of them help in the live moment. Research with non-native speakers in global teams revealed two clear needs current tools ignore: cues must arrive by voice, not text, because reading suggestions during a live conversation adds a fourth task to a brain already translating, calculating, and listening. And the companion must have a human presence, not a chat window, because confidence comes from feeling coached, not corrected. Sotto is the first companion built for voice and presence in real time.

Sotto meets you wherever the moment happens. A mobile app holds your context. A desktop HUD whispers during Zoom calls. Slack, email, and AI glasses plugins extend the same discipline into the surfaces where work actually happens. Before the meeting, Sotto explains who is in the room, what each attendee tends to value, and one phrase that will land in the first ninety seconds. During the meeting, it whispers minimal cues: "open door, lead with data," or "Sarah just hedged; you have room to push." After, it shows what landed, what was misread, and one sentence worth keeping.

The design treats culture not as content to translate, but as timing, register, and risk. Every cue is a single short line. Every interaction runs on device. Sotto never speaks in the user's voice, never auto replies, and never shares what it hears with the user's manager.

Sotto is designed for the moment a smart, capable person almost speaks, and chooses not to. The product exists to make that moment cost less.

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