

MyGengo Raises $1 Million To “Own” Translation - robert_mygengo
http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/20/mygengo-raises-1-million-to-own-translation/

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harisenbon
Robert,

Just want to say congratulations! I've heard only great things about what
you're doing, and I hope you can improve the quality of web translations in
Japan.

I've been involved in a number of multi-lingual Japanese sites, and I wonder
how you feel about competition from Japanese companies.

As I'm sure you know, translation is one of those things that every large
company knows they need, but doesn't want to spend a lot of time and or money
on. Accessing an API and getting translations seems to be well beyond what
most web companies here are capable of, and so you see companies like
J-Service[1] which gives their 1-click solution to site translations. I've
seen a number of sites (usually 市役所s or 観光協会s) that have used J-Service as a
quick-fix for their translation needs.

While services like J-Service have a number of failings (SEO being the big
one), their ease of deployment makes them a low-hanging fruit for a lot of
sites.

Do you find yourself tempted to go in a similar route with MyGengo, or are you
more focused on a global strategy with your API at the forefront?

Keep up the great work!

[1]<http://www10.j-server.com/pro/>

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alinajaf
Re: comments about much bigger players, as a developer at a compay (moo.com)
whos revenue is a _rounding error_ on our competitors balance sheets, I can
say from experience that you don't need to be bigger to provide an awesome
product, amazing customer service and make a ton of money doing it.

"Owning" translation doesn't have to mean being bigger than the competition,
it just means being better.

~~~
mikle
Ahh, moo.com, my favorite site to check whether I have internet (so much
faster to type than google.com). Thank you for having a pretty site.

------
robert_mygengo
Disclosure: My company. Factual note: Not actually a Series A, was a conv.
note.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Just FYI: claiming you're going to "own" translation makes you sound idiotic,
and I'll never use your services because of this. :)

Good luck, though.

~~~
robert_mygengo
Guess you could use our services for a different reason instead. But we'll
live.

~~~
foobarbazetc
That's the point: you won't with that attitude.

I can name 3 online translation services that are much bigger than you. How
are you going to "own" a space that already has much bigger players?

I was a fan of your service (mainly because of our large Japanese user base)
up until this point. But you know what, I'll live without your service. :)

~~~
zyfo
Did you wake up on the wrong side of the bed this morning? You seem to be
awfully hostile for little reason, hence downvotes.

Repeating "I won't be using your service" is hardly constructive for anyone.
Also I don't see why you wouldn't use them if they proved to be better than
the alternatives at _what they are actually doing_.

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troels
Interesting. From a technical point of view, how does this work? Do you run
texts through an automated system and then have real people proof read it
afterwards?

~~~
patio11
They're farmed out piecewise to a pool of translators in the language pair.
Say I had actually passed the Japanese to English translation test (which I
didn't -- what can I say, must have been having a bad night, and I think I
botched the heck out of a statement on the red tide's effect on productivity
of fish stocks). I would log into myGengo, and there would be a list of J -> E
translations awaiting completion, with titles. I could get the full text for
one, get basically an editing lock on it (i.e. no one else is translating it
while I am), and then after completion the customer reviews, accepts, and I
get paid money.

This is optionally doable via API on the customer's side, which is a practical
necessity for someone whose business was doing that transaction several
hundreds or thousands of times per day. For example, you could imagine a major
online retailer deciding "We'd like to offer all of our clothes to customers
in the big six fashion markets, but drats, how to get 100k skus of
descriptions of men's formalwear translated into six languages. AHA! We'll
just build it into our CMS using the myGengo API."

Disclaimer: worked for them. They're cool folks.

~~~
nandemo
As an aside, it seems their tests are very uneven. My Japanese is below 1-kyu
level on the JLPT but I still managed to pass the Japanese to English test.
However, I failed the English to Portuguese test twice, even though my native
language is Portuguese and EN->PT is way easier for me than JP->EN.

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ehutch79
wait, how do they own translation? did they buy the .translation tld or
something? or is that word now trademarked and no one else can use it?

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rhizome
Not sure what this is about, since I refuse to visit TC anymore, but I do know
that eu$1MM is not a lot of money in the translation game...how do they expect
to own it? Oh wait, do the scare quotes mean they bought a domain name or
something silly like that?

