The Problem / Opportunity
The world has become increasingly more connected through the rise of the Internet, yet there still remains the problem of effective communication given the number of languages that exist. While services like Google Translate can help people get by in everyday life, albeit poorly translated, and DuoLingo helps consumers learn and practice new languages, translation services in the business world remain difficult. As organizations become ever more globally focused, communicating both internally and with customers remains a problem. While English was the most dominant language of the Internet in the late 90s, the democratization of the Internet has led English to only represent 30% of all content. There is a need for businesses to be multilingual, yet it is extremely expensive and difficult to hire personnel that can provide these translation services.
The Solution
Unbabel uses a combination of Natural Language Processing, algorithms, and a network of 40,000+ human post-editors to enable quality translations. By integrating with services like Salesforce and Zendesk to start, Unbabel is already integrating in workflows that companies know and love. Like we have discussed in class, the real winning piece of this solution is the combination of artificial and human intelligence, as Unbabel’s technology gets smarter as its human editors correct it. The algorithm needs training to continually improve and learn the idiosyncrasies of the myriad of human languages that exist. As of now, the technology handles about 95% of the translation, while the human translators help bring the translations to a more accurate level. Having this combination allows Unbabel to offer services faster and cheaper to companies than they could receive using Google Translate and an in-house expert, not to mention a much larger content library of languages.
Market & Comparable Solutions
Google Translate has made recent breakthroughs in translation services with its Neural Machine Translation, which translates whole sentences rather than performing it piece by piece, ultimately leading to a more relevant translation as the system can use context to figure out the translation. Google Translate was able to make more strides in recent months than it had in the past 10 years, proving that this is becoming a viable competitor for Unbabel. Yet Google’s focus has largely been consumer-focused for these applications, and since the company usually has its hand in a variety of fields, we do not see it entering business translation services at this immediate time.
Skype has created Skype Translator to help translations occur in real time during video calls. Given how ubiquitous the company is, this is an obvious step for them. However, the company currently only offers voice in 8 languages, and text in 50 for messaging. Skype is also focused not on the business segment yet, and will unlikely abandon the video focus, as that is the company’s bread and butter.
Proposed Alterations
While the company is focused largely on text, given its integrations with ZenDesk and Salesforce to start, it would do well to also consider voice services, as customer success agents and salespeople alike spend most of their time on the phone. Alternatively, the company can decide to go niche on more business functions that will need to take advantage of these services or go after verticals that are largely global in focus. The company needs to think of ways to create a moat of defensibility so that large enterprises like Google and Skype do not shift gears to offer business translation services, especially since both companies are heavily invested in artificial intelligence.
Team Members
Marjorie Chelius
Cristina Costa
Emma Nagel
Sean Neil
Jay Sathe
Sources
https://unbabel.com/ & https://www.zendesk.com/apps/unbabel-translate/ & https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EFom8UAD
http://www.geektime.com/2016/02/25/portugal-startup-unbabels-ai-puts-google-translate-to-shame/
https://www.skype.com/en/features/skype-translator/
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