
Unbabel (YC W14) raises $60M Series C to become the world’s translation layer - pauloteixeira
https://techcrunch.com/2019/09/25/unbabel-gets-60m-for-its-blended-approach-to-business-translation/
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tomp
> We are now translating over 1,000,000 customer service messages a month

> The company told us it now has more than 100k registered translators
> providing translation services for its platform.

So... each human translator translates (on average) 10 messages per month. In
fact, _less than_ 10, because (presumably) some messages are also translated
by AI.

Odd numbers.

~~~
cj
“100k registered translators” probably means “5-10k active translators” (just
a guess).

Either way, translating 1mm customer support messages per month sounds
impressive regardless of the number of people translating.

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nickpinkston
I've known Vasco since we met in the Pittsburgh tech scene a decade ago. Such
a great guy and been through a lot to get here. Congrats Unbabel!

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orf
Congratulations to Unbabel, but I've heard some nasty horror stories about the
inside and I would be skeptical of any claim to become the "world's
translation layer".

However, if investors are willing to risk it, then good luck to them. More
Portugese tech companies getting funding is always a good thing!

~~~
heymijo
> * I've heard some nasty horror stories about the inside>

Is this related to their technology, their culture, or both?

~~~
jventura
Not OP, but I've heard they used to have a compulsory surf day per week or
month, or something like that. Not bad if that's your thing..

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est31
Among other things, europe's language diversity is listed as one of the
reasons why europe isn't a good place for founding a tech company: the
american market is much more homogenous. However, for translation startups,
this diversity makes europe the best place to be in the world.

They definitely won't run out of diversity, and it also has the european
single market which makes it easy to conduct business across inner-european
borders. Furthermore, the single market is only a recent addition so many
companies and governments which start having to communicate across language
barriers are still figuring out how to do it. Canada for example already has
an established system as Switzerland has, too. But on an european level, the
market is new and fresh and there is no incumbent that needs to be disrupted.
It's great to see unbabel and deepl choosing europe as their main base of
operations.

~~~
mytailorisrich
Europe's language diversity is a trivial cost of business and does not impede
tech companies.

But, obviously, that does make Europe a very good market for translation
companies.

~~~
mbesto
> Europe's language diversity is a trivial cost of business and does not
> impede tech companies.

This can't be serious. This is laughable by any stretch of the imagination.

Here's a list of how it impedes tech companies:

1\. Localization effort for 20+ languages (for mainland EU). Every time a new
feature that has some words included in it, it has to be translated.
Screenshots in support have to be updated.

2\. Training - if you have to train users, you need language specific
training.

3\. Account management - account/success managers need to be language
specific.

4\. Support - having support personnel that can speak different languages.

None of those are trivial and all cost significant money.

~~~
mytailorisrich
It is indeed laughable to claim that absolutely all languages should be
supported at all times and that a localisation is costly ("screenshot have to
be updated", come on...) By the way, in the EU a population equal to the US's
is reached by going for the 5 most populous countries (granted, as it happens
that does mean 5 languages, including English, but that also means that these
5 languages cover a population larger the US's).

The rest of the points, if needed, grow with the size of the customer base and
do not impede tech companies' growth in the EU v the US.

Rudeness and bluster are not arguments.

~~~
mbesto
Clearly your definition of "impede" is very different from mine.

> should be supported at all times

Where did I say that? We're talking about impeding growth, which is along a
continuum of time. Any additional "n" amount of effort required during a
growth period is going to slow it progress. Additional effort is absolutely
necessary to support a different local language by definition. It doesn't mean
growth is impossible, it just means it requires extra effort and resources,
which in turn means additional time and money.

> that a localisation is costly

Are you claiming it doesn't incur _any_ cost? At what scale (let's use lines
of translated text as a barometer) have you ever operated at?

> ("screenshot have to be updated", come on...)

Have you ever had to create support documentation in different languages? For
the French specifically? Your reaction tells me this is not the case.

> bluster are not arguments.

Where specifically was I acting in a threatening way in my argument?

~~~
monkeywork
Canadian here and doing this for French and English has not been a major deal
breaker. One of the qualifications we put on our documentation team was being
bilingual.

You can also NOT use typical screenshots for documentation but rather have
templates screenshots that contain no text and then layer the text over top of
those and use things like language selection in the browser to load the
correct language.

Employee training can be simplified by headquartering out of one country and
having a "primary" language that you work out of day to day.

For many early startups having full fledged customer support (call center
style) isn't likely anyway, doing it via chat / email / support tickets can be
translated or you can diversify your support hires to cover the languages you
officially support.

So is there additional costs - definitely - are they enough to impede and side
rail a startup... likely not, and if they are that startup likely wouldn't
have been able to succeed anywhere else either.

You're getting push back for the same reason you are shaking your head at the
other poster - they are making it sound like it's free, and you're making it
sound like it's going to crush someone.... it's slightly more effort with
possibly a greater reward if you are able to do it properly.

~~~
mytailorisrich
I acknowledged that this was a cost and never suggested it was free.

My point is that, in general, it is a small cost relative to everything else.

Another point that someone in the US might not know is that if you are in a
major EU capital city or around you can relatively easily hire people who are
fluent in at least 2 languages, so some level of multi-lingual support may
thus come "for free" and it's not unusual to have 4+ languages spoken at
native level even in a relatively small team (in the tech industry).

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jklinger410
Not sure why you would bet against Google on this.

~~~
rabidrat
Google translate is tolerable for reading content in a language you don't
know, but it would be terrible for translating messages to your customers!
Human-human interaction requires a lot more understanding of nuance and idiom
and even things like culture-specific expectations of politeness. Translation
AIs are nowhere near good enough.

~~~
cactus2093
Even when you are interacting with a human support agent they're usually
reading/copy/pasting from a script, noticeably jaded and lacking empathy from
dealing with a never-ending stream of complaints that they are not empowered
to actually do much about, and/or not a native speaker. There's not usually a
whole lot of nuance in these interactions as it is.

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SenHeng
Reminds me of back when Google Translate used to be called babel. Did Google
acquire them or was it just a branding change?

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xhgdvjky
there are already excellent suctions to this problem... why is this better?

and why do you need/want ai to be involved?

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unbabelengineer
Please run as fast as you can. This company is toxic waste.

~~~
skellera
Can you explain why you hold that opinion? I’m curious as two people have
mentioned it in the comments so far.

~~~
theunixbeard
That same user posted this “Tell HN”:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19562222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19562222)

