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Translations startups targeting non-tech Japanese SMEs

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This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology. Translations startups like Shibuya-headquartered Gengo and anydooR, the Conyac crowdsourced translations operator, took part in Tokyo Business Summit 2014 held late last week at the waterfront Big Sight convention facilities. This year’s event had more tech-related firms showcasing their wares than ever before, including those related to use of the space environment. This was the first time for Gengo to set up a booth at the event, which in the past brought together non- and low-tech Japanese small and medium-sized Enterprises for the most part. Gengo’s marketing manager Nozomi Umenai said, Gengo is expanding to mass market, as exemplified by Tokyo Business Summit participants. We wanted to showcase how easy and affordable it is to use Gengo API. Many of the participants are currently looking to expand overseas business dealings, both outbound as well as inbound (especially those related to the free trade agreement with Australia, as exemplified by meat products, and Trans-Pacific Partnership), so the venue provided a ready pool of Japanese SMEs for contact by translations outfits. Conyac — whose operation is based in Kanda, Tokyo known for…

This is a guest post authored by “Tex” Pomeroy. He is a Tokyo-based writer specializing in ICT and high technology.


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Image credit: Tokyo Business Summit

Translations startups like Shibuya-headquartered Gengo and anydooR, the Conyac crowdsourced translations operator, took part in Tokyo Business Summit 2014 held late last week at the waterfront Big Sight convention facilities. This year’s event had more tech-related firms showcasing their wares than ever before, including those related to use of the space environment.

This was the first time for Gengo to set up a booth at the event, which in the past brought together non- and low-tech Japanese small and medium-sized Enterprises for the most part. Gengo’s marketing manager Nozomi Umenai said,

Gengo is expanding to mass market, as exemplified by Tokyo Business Summit participants. We wanted to showcase how easy and affordable it is to use Gengo API.

Many of the participants are currently looking to expand overseas business dealings, both outbound as well as inbound (especially those related to the free trade agreement with Australia, as exemplified by meat products, and Trans-Pacific Partnership), so the venue provided a ready pool of Japanese SMEs for contact by translations outfits.

Conyac — whose operation is based in Kanda, Tokyo known for its many low-tech SMEs — also had a booth out at the event, which was held for the 28th time since 1988.

The Conyac booth staff also noted,

We just released a website translation management tool called ‘Conyac Front‘ last month. At the summit, we’re looking for the testers for the Conyac Front(β).

Other firms of interest this year were those focused on Business Continuity Planning (BCP) and other emergency-related businesses.

Further info on Tokyo Business Summit is available at http://www.business-summit.jp/tbs/

In Japan, a mobile app that lets travelers get help from interpreters

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Many Japanese companies have launched services that aim to better serve travelers coming to Japan. Of course, one of the biggest obstacles for such travelers is probably the language barrier. And today we’d like to tell you about a new service that aims to address the problem using smartphones. Tokyo-based company Demo recently unveiled a video chat app called Lacu which helps travelers find crowdsourced interpreters and helps them communicate with locals who cannot speak your language. The app is currently available for iOS (there’s an app for travelers and for interpreters), but they may develop an Android version too if all goes well. Using the app, you can easily find a crowdsourced interpreter to help you communicate using the video chat feature. Every interpreter can establish a price for their service ranging from 20 yen to 100 yen per minute, and volunteer interpreters can even do it for free. 40% of the fee goes to the interpreter, and 30% will be collected by both the company and the App Store. Demo has previously worked with web services like usability analytics tool Ghostrec from Sweden and a content management system from Serbia, bringing them to Japanese and Asian markets. During…

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Many Japanese companies have launched services that aim to better serve travelers coming to Japan. Of course, one of the biggest obstacles for such travelers is probably the language barrier. And today we’d like to tell you about a new service that aims to address the problem using smartphones.

Tokyo-based company Demo recently unveiled a video chat app called Lacu which helps travelers find crowdsourced interpreters and helps them communicate with locals who cannot speak your language. The app is currently available for iOS (there’s an app for travelers and for interpreters), but they may develop an Android version too if all goes well.

Using the app, you can easily find a crowdsourced interpreter to help you communicate using the video chat feature. Every interpreter can establish a price for their service ranging from 20 yen to 100 yen per minute, and volunteer interpreters can even do it for free. 40% of the fee goes to the interpreter, and 30% will be collected by both the company and the App Store.

Demo has previously worked with web services like usability analytics tool Ghostrec from Sweden and a content management system from Serbia, bringing them to Japanese and Asian markets. During the localization process, the company invited engineers to their office in Tokyo, but the visitors had trouble communicating with locals, especially on weekends. As a result of this experience, Demo started developing their app.

We’ve seen similar services in the past, such as Babelverse or SmileCall. Babelverse is a low-cost but convenient simultaneous service for conferences, but it is less fitting for casual dialogues between people. SmileCall helps you communicate with a receptionist at public venues such as hotels, but it’s provided at a venue owner’s expense, so you couldn’t really bring it with you sightseeing.

Demo started acquiring interpreters prior to the app’s launch and has already seen more than 500 downloads and 300 sign-ups from interpreters. The company’s president and CEO Yoshiyasu Tsunoda told us they are ready to accept over 100,000 users requesting interpretations.

Website translation tool WorldJumper launches freemium version

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See the original post in Japanese. WorldJumper provides website translation services for affordable rates by making the most of a combination of machine translation, human translation, and a database of past translation results. Tokyo-based Yaraku, the startup behind the service, announced today it has launched a freemium version of the service that allows you to translate your website for free. With this new version, the company is encouraging more hotels or exporters to create websites in foreign languages (Japanese, English, Korean, and simplified and traditional Chinese). Our readers may recall the company raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May. It also partnered with crowdsourced translation service Conyac back in September. Unlike conventional translation services, WorldJumper outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. In this way, it helps keep translation costs down while still improving quality over time. The freemium version does have some limitations however, such no customer support and ads inserted in the translated pages. If you want to polish the quality of the results, you can order a fully human translation for a fee. The company expects to…

worldjumper_screenshot

See the original post in Japanese.

WorldJumper provides website translation services for affordable rates by making the most of a combination of machine translation, human translation, and a database of past translation results. Tokyo-based Yaraku, the startup behind the service, announced today it has launched a freemium version of the service that allows you to translate your website for free.

With this new version, the company is encouraging more hotels or exporters to create websites in foreign languages (Japanese, English, Korean, and simplified and traditional Chinese).

Our readers may recall the company raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May. It also partnered with crowdsourced translation service Conyac back in September. Unlike conventional translation services, WorldJumper outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. In this way, it helps keep translation costs down while still improving quality over time.

The freemium version does have some limitations however, such no customer support and ads inserted in the translated pages. If you want to polish the quality of the results, you can order a fully human translation for a fee.

The company expects to see over 10,000 websites using the service by next April. We hope it can help many startups here in Japan reach out to global markets.

Japanese translation startup Conyac raises $600,000

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See the original story in Japanese. Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has raised funding worth 60 million yen (approximately $600,000) from three Japanese VC firms: United, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Capital. Coinciding with this announcement, Conyac also unveiled that its total number of corporate users exceeds 1,000. With these new funds, the company plans to intensify business and system development efforts. We’ve been using Conyac for translating news stories between Japanese and English. In the interests of full dislosure, I spoke with some of the investors to help them understand how much potential the startup might have. Here is the points I told them: Language barriers can be a big problem, especially here in Asia where languages are so diverse. There could be big potential in launching news media sites that making the most of translation services like Conyac, in the same way that we do. Many people in Japan have difficulty finding information because of language barriers. If the startup can eliminate the loss of such business opportunities, it could potentially have a great impact on business and culture. Even in this era, I’m still a little skeptical about whether…

naoki-yamada
Naoki Yamada

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has raised funding worth 60 million yen (approximately $600,000) from three Japanese VC firms: United, Mitsubishi UFJ Capital, and SMBC Capital. Coinciding with this announcement, Conyac also unveiled that its total number of corporate users exceeds 1,000.

With these new funds, the company plans to intensify business and system development efforts.

We’ve been using Conyac for translating news stories between Japanese and English. In the interests of full dislosure, I spoke with some of the investors to help them understand how much potential the startup might have. Here is the points I told them:

  • Language barriers can be a big problem, especially here in Asia where languages are so diverse.
  • There could be big potential in launching news media sites that making the most of translation services like Conyac, in the same way that we do.

Many people in Japan have difficulty finding information because of language barriers. If the startup can eliminate the loss of such business opportunities, it could potentially have a great impact on business and culture.

Even in this era, I’m still a little skeptical about whether or not machine translation services will be able to overcome language barriers. Crowdsourced translation services is just one available option.

I think they might need to publish more case studies about how companies or entrepreneurs can expand their business by breaking language barriers. For many users, if you can recognize Conyac as a platform that enhances your business, then you can recognize the real value proposition of the platform.

Translation startup Conyac partners with World Jumper, introduces new API

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Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has partnered with Yaraku, the provider of website translation tool World Jumper. Since its launch back in 2009, Anydoor has been providing translation services between multiple languages using crowdsourced workers. The company recently set up its first overseas office in San Francisco, and is intensifying its global expansion efforts to better serve users worldwide and diversify the language base of its crowdsourced workers. To date the startup has raised a total of approximately 40 million yen ($431,000) from several Japanese investors. World Jumper was launched last year, and has been a translation service mainly for website owners. The company outsources orders to third-party agencies (such as Conyac or Gengo), but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The company raised 110 million yen (about $1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May. By joining forces, the two startups expect to serve more translation needs, but at affordable rates. Surely this sector…

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Tokyo-based Anydoor, the startup behind crowdsourced translation service Conyac, announced today that it has partnered with Yaraku, the provider of website translation tool World Jumper.

Since its launch back in 2009, Anydoor has been providing translation services between multiple languages using crowdsourced workers. The company recently set up its first overseas office in San Francisco, and is intensifying its global expansion efforts to better serve users worldwide and diversify the language base of its crowdsourced workers. To date the startup has raised a total of approximately 40 million yen ($431,000) from several Japanese investors.

World Jumper was launched last year, and has been a translation service mainly for website owners. The company outsources orders to third-party agencies (such as Conyac or Gengo), but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in its database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The company raised 110 million yen (about $1.1 million) from several Japanese investors back in May.

By joining forces, the two startups expect to serve more translation needs, but at affordable rates. Surely this sector will be positively impacted by recently announced Tokyo Olympic Games coming up in 2020. With the partnership, Conyac also changed its web interface today and released a new API that allows third-party developers to integrate the translation solutions with their apps.

Translation startup Gengo relocates its home base, has some changes in store

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Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further. CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience. In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February. To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in…

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Tokyo-based translation startup Gengo has recently relocated its head office to Shibuya, a district where many Japanese startups are based. The company held a press conference today to unveil how they expect to evolve the platform one step further.

CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine, and VP of product management Hiroto Tokusei were all present at the conference, where they proudly introduced their new office where 26 people from 12 countries are working to give their users a better experience.

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From the left: VP Hiroto Tokusei, CEO Robert Laing, CTO Matthew Romaine

In the presentation, the startup revealed that they are currently working on launching a new interface, which will probably go live next month. For crowdsourced workers who typically translate large volume of texts, the startup will provide an interface that helps you use the same terminology in an entire document and check for spelling or grammatical errors. For clients who order translation requests, the platform will be able to accept business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel, etc., as well as plain text formats. The startup’s competitor Conyac also recently rolled out this feature on its platform back in February.

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The Gengo team at its new office in Shibuya

To date, the service has been used to hire more than 8,000 crowdsourced workers, serving translation needs in 38 languages. In the last three months, they’ve transacted more than 22 million translation requests from clients in Japan and around the rest of the world. By refining the service’s interface, they hope to transact more translation orders and enhance their revenue stream.

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Annual growth of translation orders using Gengo

Gengo originally launched back in late 2008, at that time under the name MyGengo. In 2010, the startup secured seed funding of $750,000 from 500 Startups, Last.fm co-founder Felix Miller, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, and ex-Value Commerce CEO Brian Nelson. Subsequently, it received $5.25 million in a series A investment round from Atomico and 500 Startups. And then this year, it also received series B funding worth $12 million from Intel Capital (US), Atomico (UK), Iris Capital (France), Infocomm Investments (Singapore), STC Ventures (Saudi Arabia), and NTT Docomo Ventures (Japan).

TapLingual: The mobile solution to Japan’s language woes?

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Last month at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo Japan, we had a chance to see a number of great startups during the LaunchPad pitch event. We had to hustle to cover as many of them as we could, but one that we didn’t get a chance to discuss was TapLingual. The startup pointed out in its pitch that while the number of tourists coming to Japan is expected to grow in the coming years, there’s still a significant language barrier for those in the tourism or service industries. TapLingual’s proposed solution is to enlist the help of a real translator who is sort of conferenced into the conversation, face-to-face, using its smartphone app. As a part of its on-stage pitch at LaunchPad, TapLingual gave a short video demo (included below) that presented the situation of a Chinese tourist visiting a shop in Japan. The linguistically challenged shopkeeper brings out the TapLingual apps, and is promptly rescued by the smartphone translator. The service would cost such a retailer 3000 yen per month to use (or about $30), and so far it supports Chinese, English, and Korean. While serving foreign tourists is most certainly a problem here in Japan, I’m not…

taplingual

Last month at the Infinity Ventures Summit in Sapporo Japan, we had a chance to see a number of great startups during the LaunchPad pitch event. We had to hustle to cover as many of them as we could, but one that we didn’t get a chance to discuss was TapLingual.

The startup pointed out in its pitch that while the number of tourists coming to Japan is expected to grow in the coming years, there’s still a significant language barrier for those in the tourism or service industries. TapLingual’s proposed solution is to enlist the help of a real translator who is sort of conferenced into the conversation, face-to-face, using its smartphone app.

As a part of its on-stage pitch at LaunchPad, TapLingual gave a short video demo (included below) that presented the situation of a Chinese tourist visiting a shop in Japan. The linguistically challenged shopkeeper brings out the TapLingual apps, and is promptly rescued by the smartphone translator.

The service would cost such a retailer 3000 yen per month to use (or about $30), and so far it supports Chinese, English, and Korean.

While serving foreign tourists is most certainly a problem here in Japan, I’m not quite certain if this can be an easy solution. Most shops probably have specialized, frequently used vocab, and I think a translating solution would need to address that to ensure great quality. But TapLingual’s proposal is bold if nothing else, and I’ll be curious to see how their early trials go.

Japanese website translation startup World Jumper raises $1.1M

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See the original post in Japanese Tokyo-based startup Yaraku has introduced a website translation tool called World Jumper, and it has recently raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, and several other angel investors. The startup was first launched back in 2009, and it has been providing multi-lingual translation services for website owners. In terms of differentiation from other translation services, the company outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in the database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The startup has different translation databases for different categories of websites, such as e-commerce sites, portal sites, or general corporate websites. The startup’s clients include eBay, the guide app Tokyo Cool, Sunbridge Venture Capital, and digital ad agency Opt. All these companies typically need website translation in order to reach global audiences. The multilingual-translation tool includes a feature that scrapes your website, recognizes which part needs changes or additional translation when the website is updated. In this process, a translation will be provided…

worldjumper_screenshot

See the original post in Japanese

Tokyo-based startup Yaraku has introduced a website translation tool called World Jumper, and it has recently raised about 110 million yen ($1.1 million) from Nissay Capital, Nippon Venture Capital, and several other angel investors.

The startup was first launched back in 2009, and it has been providing multi-lingual translation services for website owners. In terms of differentiation from other translation services, the company outsources orders to third-party agencies, but it also accumulates frequently-used translation requests and results in the database for future reference. This results in better translation results without the need to outsource to agencies, and it helps keep translation costs down while the quality improves as time goes by. The startup has different translation databases for different categories of websites, such as e-commerce sites, portal sites, or general corporate websites.

The startup’s clients include eBay, the guide app Tokyo Cool, Sunbridge Venture Capital, and digital ad agency Opt. All these companies typically need website translation in order to reach global audiences.

The multilingual-translation tool includes a feature that scrapes your website, recognizes which part needs changes or additional translation when the website is updated. In this process, a translation will be provided based on the original HTML file without changing the source codes, so that you don’t need to re-edit the files for each additional language as long as its design format or website structure is the same as the original. Essentially, the clients don’t need to care about maintaining their non-Japanese websites.

Of course even with cutting-edge technology, automated translation between different languages cannot ensure total accuracy without human intervention. The World Jumper system still has the possibility of mistranslation or awkwardness. But in order to reduce this risk, the service gives you an interface where you can translate by yourself to educate the system for more accurate results with the future orders.

The fee consists of 80,000 yen ($800) for the initial account setup, 8,800 yen ($88) for monthly usage, and additional costs for manual translation. Your first translation requests is processed manually, but subsequent requests will be processed based on the database. This step is the one that results in reduced total costs.

With this funding, the startup plans further development on the platform, making it open to third-party developers. They expect to acquire 1,000 corporate user accounts by the end of this year.

In this space, we have already seen other competitors including HongKong’s One Sky, Finland’s Get Localization, and Silicon Valley’s Transifex.

Translation start-up Conyac plans presence in San Francisco, now offers services for businesses

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Conyac is a Tokyo-based startup that focuses on providing cost-effective translation services, leveraging crowdsourced expertise. It recently added a new service to its repertoire called Conyac for Business, and the company also announced its first overseas expansion to San Francisco. In addition to those developments, we also learned that Una Aruna Softic has joined the team to help their international marketing efforts in San Francisco. She previously worked with EverConnect.me, a social media account aggregation service that was shut down last September. We spoke with Una as well as Conyac’s CEO Naoki Yamada, about their plans to grow this translation business. Tell us about this new business service, and why you are expanding your offerings in this way. It’s called Conyac for Business, and it is designed better suit business translation needs. We started our service in May of 2009, aiming at giving individual users a way to break language barriers at affordable rates. [But] now we’re receiving more translation requests from corporate users, and that’s why we created the new service, to better serve those users. How is it different from your existing service? Our regular service provides translation services for casual communication purposes, such contacting a sales representative…

Conyac is a Tokyo-based startup that focuses on providing cost-effective translation services, leveraging crowdsourced expertise. It recently added a new service to its repertoire called Conyac for Business, and the company also announced its first overseas expansion to San Francisco. In addition to those developments, we also learned that Una Aruna Softic has joined the team to help their international marketing efforts in San Francisco. She previously worked with EverConnect.me, a social media account aggregation service that was shut down last September. We spoke with Una as well as Conyac’s CEO Naoki Yamada, about their plans to grow this translation business.

Conyac's Una Softic (left) and CEO Naoki Yamada (right)
Conyac’s Una Softic (left) and CEO Naoki Yamada (right)

Tell us about this new business service, and why you are expanding your offerings in this way.

It’s called Conyac for Business, and it is designed better suit business translation needs. We started our service in May of 2009, aiming at giving individual users a way to break language barriers at affordable rates. [But] now we’re receiving more translation requests from corporate users, and that’s why we created the new service, to better serve those users.

How is it different from your existing service?

Our regular service provides translation services for casual communication purposes, such contacting a sales representative at an e-commerce site abroad when ordering. For the purpose of encouraging our (crowdsourced) translators to make a translation request very quickly, the maximum length in each ‘request unit’ was limited to [a maximum of] 720 characters. However, for the business service, the limit is extended up to 50,000 characters so that our users need not to split sentences into pieces when placing a translation order, meaning it may fit even for business documents as well.  

Of course, in terms of satisfying clients with the translation quality, we also established a new qualification process to choose highly skilled translators for business needs. The business service can accept original documents for translation requests not only as text files but also in some different business document file formats such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Powerpoint, and Keynote Files. This feature would be really helpful for our business users, because they no longer need to replace texts in their original documents with translation results.

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So why do this now?

We found there’s a need for much work coming from the social gaming industry. Social gaming developers are now intensifying their international expansion. And in terms of localizing their gaming apps with foreign languages, they have a tremendous need for translation because the release cycles of new apps and updates are very, very short. We believe our service fit them well, and that’s why we also added to our sales headcount in order to cultivate more corporate clients from the industry.

Does the recent change of your major shareholders have anything to do with this new business strategy?

Yes. So far, we have fundraised a total of approximately 40 million yen ($431,000) from Samurai Incubate, United (previously known as ngi group), and Skylight Consulting. The shares previously held by our first investor Samurai Incubate were handed over to angel investor Anri Samata, because he has many connections with our potential clients, so that he could help us.

You’re launching a new office in San Francisco. What’s the main purpose of that office?

Yes, my new colleague Una will be in charge of that, and we will be setting up a new office (or a desk) at a co-working space in San Francisco. We’ve not yet decided the location or the date of its launch, but will announce that very shortly. Basically, the main role of our SF office is to intensify our marketing efforts and gain a presence in the global startup community. Through the new office, we expect to get more new clients from the West coast who are in need of translation as well.

Do you have any plan to set up other overseas offices after San Francisco?

Yes. We’re now exploring the potential of setting up a new office in Singapore, where a number of Japanese and Asian gaming/tech startups have their offices.


The competition in the translation space is getting more intense these days. A Conyac competitor, 500Starups-backed Gengo is considered to be slightly ahead when it comes to serving businesses, as they have developed many tools and interfaces for business translation needs. In the Asian region, other startups in the translation space include OneSky and Translation Market – both from Hong Kong.