> 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.
Either way, translating 1mm customer support messages per month sounds impressive regardless of the number of people translating.
https://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2018/01/how-many-mech...
However, if investors are willing to risk it, then good luck to them. More Portugese tech companies getting funding is always a good thing!
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.
The American market is homogenous but crowded. World markets are increasingly open, but Americans aren't necessarily best positioned to take the lead.
Do we have evidence of this?
(European start-ups do tend to have a competitive advantage with administration, given the complexity and diversity of regulatory regimes on the continent. This explains e.g. Spotify (negotiating music rights) and Klarna (negotiating with banks).)
But, obviously, that does make Europe a very good market for translation 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.
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.
While EU regulations harmonize a lot, it's still much, much messier than in the US.
* different tax regimes
* often quite different regulations
* contract requirements
* income levels which can affect pricing decisions / require regional pricing
* localized ad campaigns per country
* getting media attention in each country is hard
* ...
Are you suggesting that the language diversity doesn’t impede tech companies from reaching English speaking markets the same as American tech companies do? Or that the language diversity doesn’t impede companies from reaching those language-diverse markets?
Or do you think it's coincidence, or due to economic structure, that the US and China dominate the tech scene?
This is a pretty widely understood hurdle for EU startups, and it's unclear why you dismiss it out of hand.
My reasoning is that if you're a tech company then translation costs are trivial (that's close to obvious)
Now, depending on your industry, cultural differences may be an important factor but that's different. All the well-known tech companies are equally present across the EU so it does not seem like a major problem (that may be different across widely different cultures).
and why do you need/want ai to be involved?
