protected void getStringConverter(ObjectInspector[] arguments, int i, String argOrder)
      throws UDFArgumentTypeException {
    textConverters[i] = ObjectInspectorConverters.getConverter(
        arguments[i],
        PrimitiveObjectInspectorFactory.writableStringObjectInspector);
  }
GenericUDFSoundex.

Soundex is an encoding used to relate similar names, but can also be used as
a general purpose scheme to find word with similar phonemes.
ql/src/java/org/apache/hadoop/hive/ql/udf/generic/GenericUDFSoundex.java