Babelverse, the language translation startup that landed the title of “Audience Choice” at Disrupt NYC this past May, has raised a seed round led by 500 Startups along with a group of other angel investors.
Babelverse’s online marketplace provides speech translation services in close to real-time through a worldwide network of human interpreters. Today, Babelverse co-founders Josef Dunne and Mayel de Borniol tell me, its team of nearly 4,000 interpreters spans more than 100 countries and currently covers 642 languages (seriously, I am not sure that I knew there were that many.) We at TechCrunch are actually using Babelverse to translate the live webcast of next week’s Disrupt SF conference into 12 languages.
Dunne and de Bornial say that the new money will be used to build out their full-time team which at the moment consists of three people based in San Francisco. The company plans to hire globally, though — given their already fully geographically dispersed network of translators, de Bornial says Babelverse is very comfortable hiring “the best person for the role regardless of physical location.” Another focus going forward, they say, will be mobile apps.
Also, Babelverse is a nice fit for 500 Startups, the startup accelerator and VC fund led by Dave McClure which has become known for its global focus. It’ll be fun to see how the company grows going forward.
Want a look at Babelverse in action? Check out their demo onstage at Disrupt NYC a few months back:
Babelverse is the first solution for universal speech translation, powered by a global community of human interpreters. It enables people to benefit from on-the-spot interpretation, in any of the world’s spoken languages. Multilingual speakers and professional interpreters can earn money for interpreting remotely. Babelverse is available to events and conferences, for both attendees and remote viewers, making any live-streamed video available in multiple languages, for people who would be unable to attend, let alone understand. In January 2012, Babelverse offered live...
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