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Smartling raises $24 million to translate everything online

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Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei  Identity Verified
Ghana
Local time: 17:00
Japanisch > Englisch
Very nice Oct 10, 2013

But how much of this money will the actual translators see? That's the 24 million dollar question.
 
Orrin Cummins
Orrin Cummins  Identity Verified
Japan
Local time: 02:00
Japanisch > Englisch
+ ...
Misleading title Oct 11, 2013

The article title makes it sound like this company is trying to translate everything online, which to me means the entire Internet. Finding out how they were going to manage that with a mere $24 million was the only reason I clicked the link...
 
Jeff Whittaker
Jeff Whittaker  Identity Verified
Vereinigte Staaten
Local time: 13:00
Spanisch > Englisch
+ ...
They are geniuses Oct 11, 2013

"Smartling users can find professional translators on call to handle requests within a few hours via its platform. They can also use Smartling to crowdsource the work of translation, either internally with their employees, or externally with an online community of users."

Geniuses!!!


Orrin Cummins wrote:

The article title makes it sound like this company is trying to translate everything online, which to me means the entire Internet. Finding out how they were going to manage that with a mere $24 million was the only reason I clicked the link...


 
Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Niederlande
Local time: 19:00
Mitglied (2006)
Englisch > Afrikaans
+ ...
Instead of speculating... Oct 11, 2013

TransAfrique wrote:
But how much of this money will the actual translators see? That's the 24 million dollar question.


Instead of speculating about it, why not try it out? They allow you to indicate your own rate on their "translator sign-up" page, so try signing up with your usual rate and tell us what happens.

http://www.smartling.com/translator_reg

Remember also that the newspaper report was written for a general audience by a journalist who probably doesn't know much about translation and decided to err on the side of caution by dumbing things down to his own level. His report seems to make generous use of the company's own press release, which should always be read with a pinch of salt. All in all, the report says very little of value, except that Smartling facilitates web-based translation services and that they have sufficiently impressed a venture capital company.

Although their system is used by TED Talks in a crowdsourcing scenario, I get the impression that the way TED Talks implemented it is an exceptional case and not the way Smartling usually operates.

You can see the journalist had little time to write the report, because his final paragraph says "Smartling’s competition includes translation tech startups like Duolingo or Cloudwords, and older translation service providers and agencies like TransPerfect Translations or Lionbridge Technologies" which is absolute rubbish. Duolingo is a language learning portal and is no competition for Smartling. And as far as I know TransPerfect Translations does not offer wholly web-based translation solution. No... the journa just googled a bit and wrote down some names that sounded promising to him.



[Edited at 2013-10-11 07:42 GMT]
 
fiomaravilha
fiomaravilha
Local time: 10:00
Not a competitor Oct 28, 2013


You can see the journalist had little time to write the report, because his final paragraph says "Smartling’s competition includes translation tech startups like Duolingo or Cloudwords, and older translation service providers and agencies like TransPerfect Translations or Lionbridge Technologies" which is absolute rubbish...


Agreed, and not to mention that Cloudwords doesn't even offer translation services. I.e., if they wanted, Smartling could even offer their translation services to Cloudwords customers.
 


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Smartling raises $24 million to translate everything online







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