By Dylan Petrello, '21
Language can be quite 
an effective barrier that halts trade and communication between companies and consumers. The United Kingdom’s government has even estimated that the country loses approximately 3.5% of its GDP each year because of its population’s lack of foreign language skills. Unbabel, a tech startup based in Lisbon, has proposed a solution to this problem. What Unbabel suggests is a translation platform that is incorporated into every app, interface, and business process to help communication between parties that speak two different languages operate much more smoothly than ever before.
"Unbabel's mission is to help companies communicate with their customers in any language," says Vasco Pedro, CEO and co-founder of the company. He got the idea through a conversation with an Airbnb host who was discussing his difficulties communicating with potential customers in different languages. Pedro thought that a potential solution to this problem could be adding a translation layer between such interactions to help them operate much more smoothly.
Unbabel uses a combination of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a network of 55,000 human translators in order to operate translations amongst text based communication, such as emails and online chats. Since its dawn, it has also added a number of unique and efficient features, such as a smart-routing system that will give translations to the human translator most fit for that specific job.
Unbabel has helped redefine online translating services with quicker and more accurate translations that helped global business translations run much more smoothly. People have been worried that the development and widespread use of machine translators will threaten smaller languages, but Pedro argues that it will preserve them rather, as this translator will help any person essentially speak any language they want, smaller languages included.
Sources:
https://www.techworld.com/startups/how-unbabel-blends-machines-humans-translate-conversations-3675565/https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/11/unbabel/Image Sources:https://www.techworld.com/startups/how-unbabel-blends-machines-humans-translate-conversations-3675565/https://unbabel.com/