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.
TechCrunch has millions of readers around the globe, and they speak far more languages than our staffers or guests at Disrupt. To make it easier for our global readers to enjoy the conference, we are excited to partner with Babelverse, a Disrupt NYC 2012 Battlefield finalist, to provide real-time, simultaneous translation of the conference
Josef Dunne and Mayel de Borniol envision a world where everyone can communicate effortlessly--while speaking their own native language. (Yep, like in Star Trek.) Their project, Babelverse, is launching at LeWeb this week.
If there are two entrepreneurs that embody the grand adventure of starting a company, it’s Josef Dunne and Mayel de Borniol from Babelverse.
The pair, almost entirely bootstrapped and currently based out of a 15 square metre shed slash office on a family property in London, are taking the web conference circuit by storm.
Livestreamed events just got more exciting to plan! If you have an event or conference that you know from past data attracts a global audience on site and earns a significant number of video views on your Web site or YouTube channel afterwards, you have an option to introduce a new revenue stream by offering paid access to real-time event proceedings using translation services like Babelverse. Or simply open up your event to the online world for free for increased exposure, as Tech Crunch Disrupt so wisely did.
As its name suggests, Babelverse deals in languages. The app is a real-time voice translation service, powered by a "global community of human interpreters." By crowdsourcing both professional and amateur interpreters for a per minute fee (that ranges between $0.20 to $1.00), users can log on, find a translator immediately, and begin a conversation with someone who speaks another language. Right now, the network includes about 3,000 translators, but its founder, Josef Dunne, believes it has the potential to scale. "This can be a revolution in personal communication," he said.
Babelverse, disrupting interpretation
You may find it hard to believe that its service exists: doesn’t real-time speech interpretation sound like pure science-fiction? But if you are still having doubts, we can confirm that the startup has proven multiple times that its platform is fully operational.
More importantly, we are talking about high-quality interpretation, performed by native speakers which form part of Babelverse’s community. While automated voice interpretation tools have been creeping up in the App Store thanks to the growing popularity of speech recognition, they offer disappointing results at best — at least for now.
Co-Founder
Co-Founder