Today, you can be anywhere in the world in a matter of clicks. Thanks to globalization and the plucky old Information Superhighway, our world is shrinking. Inquisitive globetrotters can pop over to Google Earth, pilot through volcanoes in Hawaii or navigate a few Norwegian fjords and still be home for dinner. Vasco de Gama? Not impressed.
The sheer number of people not only coming online but shopping, watching, learning and consuming online — from every corner of the globe — is staggering, and every business wants to take advantage. Businesses now know they need to be where their customers are and that they can’t be one-size-fits all if they hope to thrive in today’s global marketplace.
The problem, of course, is that their new, global customer rarely seems to be speaking the same language. Not surprisingly, translation remains a big, expensive problem for businesses today. Most companies recognize the importance of localizing their websites and content, but few have the time, money or inclination to go one step further and localize that rapidly updating content or section of their site, their FAQs or their customer service interactions.
For most sites, these last two points, especially, are usually what break the budget — for those lucky (or smart) enough to even have a line of the budget dedicated to translation spend. This is where Unbabel wants to help. The Y Combinator-backed startup is launching today with a new kind of online translation service that aims to make it easy and affordable for a business of any size to translate all of its online content — from marketing collateral and FAQs to customer service emails, both static and dynamic.
To save businesses from breaking the bank on translation services, Unbabel has developed technology that combines machine learning-based auto-translation with crowdsourced editing to offer quality translation at what it claims is “one-fifth” the going rate. By contracting Unbabel directly or by using the company’s REST-based API to integrate translation directly into their workflow, businesses can translate all of their website’s content in a flash at $0.02 per word.
Now translating over 30,000 words/day for over 30 customers, Unbabel’s secret sauce leverages artificial intelligence software and its stable of over 3,100 editors (or translators) to translate a website’s content from one language into its customer’s language of choice. First, its machine learning technology translates the text from source into the target language, at which point it uses its Mechanical Turk-style distribution system to assign editing tasks to the right translators, who then check the translation for errors and for stylistic inconsistencies.
Unbabel editors work remotely, via their laptops or mobile phones, on translations, which co-founder Vasco Pedro says provides the key to faster translations. This, combined with the efficiency of its task distribution and administration algorithms, provides a level of efficiency that allows editors to earn up to $10/hour working for Unbabel.
The startup is also hoping to appeal to businesses looking to cater to international customers not only by offering integration through its REST-based API or by allowing them to quickly fill out their online form to order translations, but by offering email-based translation as well. To help with international, localized-style support, Unbabel offers businesses the ability to provide customer support in a customer’s native language via email as well at $3 per 150 words. Businesses can simply send an email to a language-designated inbox it sets up with Unbabel, and the company will reply with a translation in less than an hour.
Beyond email, Unbabel also offers a separate pricing tier for FAQs, which allows businesses to translate their user’s comments (and their own) so they can follow all the whole conversation on their website at $5 for every 250 words. In turn, businesses can use the startup’s translation technology to translating their social streams, as Unbabel will convert each tweet, post and comment into their language of choice at $1 for every 50 words.
This means that businesses can send Unbabel what they need translated online, through its API or by email, which the company then converts into micro-tasks, automatically translating the source and turns over to its community of editors to refine. The content is then delivered, recombined and translated in near real-time. Today, the startup supports nearly 14 languages, including English to 13 other languages, or nearly any combination thereof.
However, co-founders Vasco Calais Pedro, Sofia Pessanha, João Graça, Bruno Prezado Sliva, and Hugo Silva tell us that they’re working to add more languages to its roster, and hope to begin supporting new languages over the course of the coming year.
fTranslate your user’s comments and your own, follow all the conversations on your website.
Unbabel helps you provide customer support to your international customers in their native language. Just send an email to a language designated inbox and Unbabel will reply with a translation.
Unbabel editors work on their laptops or mobile phones, this is key to faster translations.
irst, state-of-the-art artificial intelligence software translates the text from source to target language.
For most sites the last two of these especially can rapidly break any budget set aside for translation. Unbabel intends to change this using sophisticated technology that combines machine learning based auto-translation and crowd-sourced post-editing. This latter also uses machine learning to optimize the set of editors applied to a job.
Combining auto-translation and effective human editing as a service is unique and new. With Unbabel, for the first time it is now affordable for a website to translate all of their content, both static and dynamic, from marketing to FAQs, to customer service emails.
Unbabel also has released a REST-based API with which companies can integrate translation directly into their workflow. The company is growing rapidly and currently has nearly 2600 translators and are translating over 25,000 words per day for over 40 paying customers.
Unbabel was founded by Vasco Calais Pedro, Sofia Pessanha, João Graça, Bruno Prezado Sliva, and Hugo Silva. They have raised funds from Y Combinator, YCVC, Faber Ventures and Shilling Capital Partners. With over 700K words translated thus far and over 40 paying customers, Unbabel has raised just over $400K to date from Y Combinator, YCVC, Faber Ventures and Shilling Capital Partners.
For more, find Unbabel at home here.
The plan is to leave most of the money in the bank as a form of insurance. In case there’s an economic meltdown and it becomes tough to raise money, Quora will have a big enough nest egg not to have to be acquired. “I think we want our users to trust that Quora is a place that they can share their knweolgde and that we’re going to keep that knowledge available forever” D’Angelo tells me.
A glance at any list of top 10 phone makers is guaranteed to include Apple and Samsung and peppered around the list you would expect to see other big names like Sony, LG and HTC. But, that was before Xiaomi. According to new market research released by Counterpoint, an independent market research company, the list of 10 top selling smartphones for February 2014 includes not one, but two devices by Xiaomi.
