hello everyone marco montemagno here
digital domination summit and today
another great guest from japan the
founder of gang go robert lang a robber
hi going a manga how you doing excellent
every time you know that i have a new
interview is unbelievable there are
always problems you know and i’m doing
interviews with the most amazing
technical people in the world and there
is always problem you’d so this is
unbelievable the first person who will
invent a system to do easily these kind
of things will be a billionaire you know
because it’s unbelievable so many
technical takes to put together alright
but we did it and really I’m so happy to
talk with you today because I I’m really
a user of my gang go when the name was
still my gangin beginning and four guys
if you don’t know the the service just
go there check it out is unbelievable if
you need to get your things translated
i’ve been using ganga to translate
articles post short phrases short
sentences so I really always the was an
unbelievable service and I wanted to
talk with you Robert about gang go first
of all give us a little bit of context
of where is gang go now I mean how big
is the company what are you doing when
did you start just one minute in trouble
Ganga for our for the people watching
yeah sure so we started about four and a
half years ago in Tokyo founded the
company started doing the service in
about two thousand nine at that time we
were just two guys so me and my
co-founder Matthew raised a little bit
of money at the beginning of 2010 from
dave McClure 500 startups and now we’ve
grown the company since then to be about
35 people in Tokyo about 10 people in
san mateo Silicon Valley and we’ve
raised I guess sort of 19 million
dollars today which is prosto series be
around at the beginning of this year and
now you know a few months ago we
translated a hundred millionth word so
we’ve done 100 million words translation
to date so you know that growth curve
has been quite nice
and this year we’re just trying to do
more impressive but you not jump on his
Robert so I’ve been doing the biggest
girl female like but you know Japanese
right so why did you move in Japan I’m
okay at Japanese I don’t want to the
idea that i’m absolutely fluent or
anything like that certainly when i
moved here so I married my wife about
eight years ago and she’s Japanese but
she was living in London at the time so
we met and I thought would be kind of
fun to live in Japan and she was like
okay we’ll move back to Japan oh so he
moved to Japan about seven years ago and
really when I rides in Japan I didn’t
speak that good Japanese at all so the
language barrier for me was a real real
issue and also I was working on web
design projects with my co-founder of
Matthew so we were working on projects
and I was always needing some
translation and he had been in this
position at Sony where he has a half
Japanese half American guy was always
getting asked to do translation and so
we had these kind of two sides of the
same coin kind of thing and I ended up
like asking him to do translation and
asking my wife to do translation that’s
not really scalable and from his side he
was always getting annoyed about people
like me him to do translation all the
time so we just wanted to make a really
simple product that would are you know
solve that need that we both have right
tell me one thing Robert um if I go on
on gang go today I I just good here and
there is a nice interface where I just
say okay or I upload a file that I want
to translate for instance have a Google
document and I upload the dork or I just
input the text and I immediately get a
quote so I already know how much money
will spend for a translation yeah so
from the user point of view is always
for me at least it was always a magical
experience because i just upload my dear
my stuff got a quote yes we pay and then
I got the translation super fast from
someone that’s it and I always wonder
how can you make that so and I was
reading about your natural contra of
translators thousands of translators
did you build such a such a big network
number one yeah so I think I mean the
important thing as you mentioned like
the experiences is very instant it and
we wanted to model the experience that
you have like on Amazon you know if you
remember from before amazon you had to
go to the bookstore and choose the book
but from amazon is just like one click
and itunes one click right and before
gangoh came along getting a translation
human translation with one click was was
it possible right but we knew that it’s
one of these things where on the surface
it seems very very simple like above the
surface you’re like oh I just clicked
but underneath the service it’s actually
pretty complex so yeah we have 9,000
translators we knew that from the start
we were going to have to qualify these
translators like a lot of people can say
oh I’m a translator but are they any
good you need a test to figure that out
and so we implemented testing so anyone
who wants to become a translator a
kegger has to pass a two-stage testing
process and once they’ve gone through
that process they can then enter this
this pool and they get access to jobs
but the quality control isn’t over there
so we check the first job that they do
depending on the result of that they’ll
get check and subsequent more or less
times and basically our job is to make
sure to keep that quality consistent
regardless of whether you order like
today at 3pm or next week at 6pm or you
know whatever language you’re ordering
it’s our job to make sure that’s
consistent and so we do a lot of work
underneath to make it like a one click
option for the customer but so on one
side you you recruit a lot of
translators and you can select them and
you kind of verify the date good yeah
but how can you handle the the process I
mean when I what happened when I I send
a translation the translation is sent to
9000 translators or just a piece to beat
up to someone a bit to another one how
does it really work yeah so we offer
about 35 different languages or so so
there’ll be a specific pool of
translators for each language and then
within that whenever a customer orders a
job
used to be just first come first serve
so whichever translator was fastest at
clicking they would get the job but now
we’re a bit more sophisticated and so if
you’re a translator and you’ve got a
good quality score on the previous job
you’ll get better access or if you know
how to do jobs quickly and you got a
good quality score you’ll get even
higher access so there’s some
translators who get first access to jobs
but within that still is competitive and
so translators are really they have to
be pretty fast to click click employ
repair and we even have translators who
tried to build BOTS you know which will
scrape the page and then automatically
click the butt so we had to build all
this stuff around stopping the
translators but yeah it can be very
competitive but you know the good thing
about that is that the translators who
want to pick up something casual you
know they might be like on the bus on
the way to work and I can pick it up on
their smartphone and start translating
you know 200 word job they can do it
really easily and that means they’ve
made five bucks on there generally to
work as opposed to doing nothing so I
like there’s that easy access is pretty
good for let’s go how are you convincing
beginning translators to join the
platform because now is easy I mean you
say we are gang or we have this amazing
platform we have customers it’s easy but
in beginning how did you convince them
well you know we’ve always tried to be
we have a we have a one of our values is
by the people for the people right so
we’ve always tried to be as good to the
translators as we are to the customers
okay so as it as a translator
traditionally there was always a lot of
admin to do and so translate is you know
you know on our site we charge on a per
word basis on translate normally charge
on a per word faces but as a freelance
translator if you’re just charging per
word often you’re doing a lot of admin
like invoicing negotiating with clients
sending files back and forth like
answering comments all this kind of
stuff that is in really translation and
so what Ganga offered from the start was
this way to say well I don’t need to do
any of that admin I’ll just do simple
translation work and so for translators
that’s quite compelling you can sign up
on gang go for free it takes a bit of
time to take the tests but once you have
and once you past you can just say oh
got a bit of time we’ve got 20 20
minutes I can do a gang go job whereas
for other translation jobs that that 20
minutes of translating would include
maybe half an hour of admin time so they
wouldn’t really be making as much money
so to be appealing to translate as if
that way has always been important the
other thing we’ve always done is we’ve
always paid consistently like every two
weeks so we never miss translates
whereas if a translator works directly
for a customer they don’t know the
customer might pay them on time they
might not play them at all you know they
never really know so so being very very
consistent with translators has also
helped us but on you know also I think a
lot of translators who work for us they
just want to try something new you know
their internet savvy people they’re
trying to you know have some fun maybe
do some easier work and they only do
like a lot of the content that we
translate is kind of fun so it’s a lot
more fun for the translator to work for
us sometimes then to work for their
normal job that’s interesting let’s talk
about customers now think about a
company that need to be international I
live in UK but I’m Italian as you
understand for my British accent and
that the funny thing is that if I think
about countries like Italy I don’t know
wait by the way you added Italian
language in in the very beginning and
that that’s one of the reason why I
started to use gangoh stripe straight
away why did you add Italian then only
we tell your speaking and people in
Swiss I think you know a little bottles
with wide Italia Italia is actually very
popular language for our customers to
translate and so in the transition world
a lot of people say things it’s a big it
means French Italian German Spanish okay
so talons in there we also had quite a
few larger enterprise customers early on
who wanted to do Italian and you know
just one of those things where it’s it’s
it’s about their it’s not all most
popular language I would say the most
popular right now would still be
Japanese we do a lot of Chinese Spanish
Russian Portuguese but but Italians up
there so yeah you shouldn’t be too shy
about your language cool so tell me one
thing if I’m a company
one big question today is I need to go
international but going international
means doing a lot of localization things
for for your website and for everything
you do and one of this aspect obviously
is related with translations what are
your best tips having the opportunity to
watch during these years all the
translations made for so many companies
from so many people what are your best
tips to companies that really want to go
international and they need to translate
I mean where do they start from which
kind of languages choose from I mean do
you have any specific tips on this yeah
that’s a huge question by the way but
like you said you know first of all we
speak to a lot of companies that go
global at different stages different
sized companies all that kind of thing
normally you know my general advice is
be smart about it know that it’s a risk
and so like whenever you go into
national it’s not all roses right and so
we encourage people to try if they’re
just starting out just to test little
bits of content you know you don’t need
to translate your whole website and all
your documentation and try us a little
bits of content and you can do that
especially if you’ve got interested
users overseas who are already trying
your product without it being localized
those are the best guys to try with and
so HootSuite which probably knows the
Twitter management they did that very
successfully in Japan they had some
users who were trying out the product
already so they got those guys to be
advocates and testers for the service as
well the other thing I would say is that
there’s different kinds of content on
the website and so if you think about it
if you’re if you go to coca-cola calm
the big brand message on the front
that’s something that’s very very
difficult to translate and it needs to
be super high quality and it really
needs to be done by someone who truly
understands your business whereas they
might have lots and lots of subsidiary
pages with like user reviews or message
or content or you know little articles
that aren’t quite as high level so you
should need to pay as much to translate
that kind of content and so we work with
customers are often who they might use
an agency
this really high level content on the
homepage for the advertising for the
message from the CEO may be that they
use gangoh for thousands of product
descriptions or user reviews or lots of
articles on other pages and so you’ve
got to think as a customer okay what are
the tears of content that I’m going to
translate so you can be smart about how
much you spend on each tier of content
the other thing we look about with
customers yeah is that you can you can
yeah as we said test out stuff quite
quickly but you’ve got to be confident
that your if you if the test file is
through it’s going to be worth it and so
we just try to get customers to plan
their content a lot more than they might
if they didn’t talk to us you know
because the the last thing you want is
is people translating to march feeling
like it cost too much money when they
could have just tried out a little bit
of contact first oh yeah we mean we can
talk to customers about this stuff all
the time and and the other the last
thing I would say is um testing doing
language by language is better than
trying to do like 15 languages at once
you know because translating and
localizing your site and getting all
that technology ready it can be
overwhelming if you try to do like 30
languages launched just trying like one
language and getting that process down
that’s smart and then you can expect
that Robert how can I one stupid doctor
that I always had I’m I had for instance
lot of videos that I got transcribe and
then I went on gang go to get a
translation and for some of those videos
I asked for translation in Chinese or
languages that have no idea yeah the
translation is right or not so every
time I thought I trust gangoh because
you did the selection but I have no idea
if it’s written something about you know
kooky while i’m talking about the
ecology or not how are you verify how
can you be sure that the translation is
really matching your content in original
language so i guess we actually have
three times three types of users and so
one type they know the language there
are native speaker in that language so
they can check it another type they
often have some
in their company or in their team who
they can check it with and then the last
group I would say often they they’ll use
their users you know if you’ve got a
YouTube video and it’s for the Chinese
market you ask your users is this good
and often you’ll find people who can
help you either verify or they’ll
correct it if it’s no good but yeah
getting the users as that final check is
often like a really good really good way
to check we’re thinking of introducing
something in the future that will allow
our customers to do that but obviously
that the problem is you know we’re the
ones doing the translation so if we sort
of say oh we also checked your
translation it was good but you know how
can you trust us anyway but but yeah
using the users and asking the users
often you get very very honest feedback
risers can most critical so so they’re
probably the the final judge uh what
happened with the videos i think
sometimes ago I spot a kind of
partnership with YouTube where you could
get your video and translated using gang
go straight from the YouTube interface I
I didn’t really see it around so maybe
it was my my mistake I didn’t really
check that again but what’s happening
with video because a lot of companies
now producing videos and they want the
videos to be translated and and i would
say until a few years ago it was really
a pain in the ass because to translate a
video was a nightmare so tightly that
item and so on what’s your recipe for
that well yeah obviously subtitling
tools have moved on massively and so
you’ve got you know YouTube itself
you’ve got Amara you’ve got other people
offering like dots are some really good
subtitling tools and then Vicky which
you might have seen a company solely
focused on crowdsourcing translation of
subtitles was acquired by racket and a
few weeks ago for two hundred million
dollars so there’s there’s a lot of
excitement in that space we you know we
did a partnership with YouTube at the
beginning of this year so now any when
we just launched it might have only been
available to a few people but but now
any YouTube content owner who has a
transcription of their their content can
order translation through YouTube and so
that’s a sort of one or two clicks
solution
it’s very racing this you order the
translation gets put back into the
YouTube automatically you can share it
straight away and since the launch
that’s been pretty popular with our
customers the other thing we do is we
also sorry sorry Robert so it means that
if I’m on youtube I got my game
transcribed yeah i just ordered a
translation and if the translation go
went once I accepted go back straight to
my youtube video so i don’t have to
upload captioning or captions and so on
yeah that’s right i want to see if I’ve
got a page for that anyway it’s on it’s
on our website but yet it’s within the
YouTube you I yeah so there’ll be a it’s
a little button that says request
translation and just click it right
there and it’s pretty cool I really hope
it works for you I it isn’t what is but
that’s been pretty good and then that’s
obviously you sort of see to see or
prosumer video makers like yourself I
guess and then for enterprise customers
we also work with a partner called
3-play media and so they’ll do the whole
thing if you need lots and lots of
videos to be transcribed and then
translate you can do that through three
play and Ganga and so frost it’s become
a pretty popular area I would say like a
year and a half ago we weren’t really
doing much video at all and now it’s you
know it’s quite significantly impressed
so what we’re doing for translators is
creating better tools for translators so
that they can do translations of
subtitles better now there you go baby
yeah is this wonder the player UDS
against translation perfect young that’s
the page on our site and then um you
know if you go into YouTube as a Content
owner you can basically just get it from
there so this just explains how the
process works and you know it’s pretty
stressful once you’ve created your
captions yeah also because otherwise you
know you have to every time I translate
stuff is I get the transcription then I
have to go on your website or to make it
translate and then I have to go to
upload the caption file but so yeah
definitely air is it makes much more
sense very interesting yeah we love this
you know working with go
all is great and we we have a few more
things that we’re going to be able to
announce with Google in the future so
you know this frost is a really good
example of bringing translation really
really close to the customer like if
you’re on YouTube in your content owner
you don’t really even need to know that
gangoh exists and you can get
translation and it’s just a couple that
sounds yeah perfect determinant another
thing Robert just changing topic you you
said you you received finally a large
amount of funding and so I was thinking
about the start of listening to to our
chart here and obviously when you
launched having dave mcclure which is a
very family’s invest or 100 startups
obviously per 500 startups obviously
helps but I mean then then you
definitely went a long way because you
get a good funding uh what’s your again
could you elaborate on that what are you
best three tips to to startups looking
for funding I was just moderating
TechCrunch Disrupt in Italy and everyone
talking about you know how difficult is
to get funded but on the other side if
you have good numbers interactions Wow
then you can get the right investor but
not the not all the investors of the
right well so is a huge topic again but
from your experience I mean that you
lived on your skier what are your case
we obviously had kind of a unique
experience because we’re kind of like
non-japanese people in Tokyo with a
startup that you know we have a
japan-based company but actually it’s a
u.s. Delaware company with a Japanese
subsidiary and so it’s like we could
sort of raise money from Japan we could
sort of raise money from the US a lot of
us Silicon Valley bc’s don’t like
companies that aren’t in Silicon Valley
I mean that’s the truth you know you
know oh so we had to do this kind of
global fund raising thing and and like
we were very lucky to find atomico which
is the company that did the fund that
did our series a you know they there
xscape guys you know so so they all
understand global from the star and also
they had a you know they had a desire to
see Japan succeed for startups and so
you know we we certainly talked to a lot
of VCS over the lifetime with gangoh you
know and and sometimes we were
fundraising it very good circumstances
sometimes not so good you know and and I
think I guess my first tip would be that
are the the know the maybe is never
really going to turn it to the yes the
people who really like your business
really want to invest they’re going to
be excited about it from the start and
so as an entrepreneur it’s very tempting
to listen to avicii who’s who’s just
saying like yeah we’re kind of
interested oh that means I might you
know but like when they’re interested i
found that they’ll really go for it you
know and and you’ve got to remember that
so i’ll be my first tip i don’t know my
second tip would be if you if you’re not
an English speaker yet speaking English
and speak English pretty well is a
massive boost for fundraising like
because you know most pcs in the world
are in Silicon Valley they get to pick
whatever company they want to invest in
and so you know if they are not able to
communicate in English you’re really
cutting down your fundraising options
massively even if you’ve got a great
business you know and then I guess the
third thing I would say is that as we’ve
gone through stages as a business things
just change things change about what
investors are looking for so at the
angel stage or the seed stage you know
they’re really just kind of looking like
is this an idea that’s kind of
interesting you know is the founding
team a really good founding team and
that’s all they can really judge on
whereas when you get up to series be
staged it gets a lot more serious
nowadays you can’t you know you can’t
just have a bunch of users you’ve got to
have some kind of traction you know I
deal in revenue and and you’re really
looking at the company from a sort of
set of fundamentals you know what is
what’s the income statement look like
what is your business really look like
in terms of a revenue and you know when
you reach profitability is that an
interesting business can it can it scale
in the way that we like is it invested
so you have to if you want to stay on
top of things as an entrepreneur you’ve
got to go through those stages and you
can’t just rely on the same sort of fun
and quirky stuff that people like at the
scene stage you’ve got to be operating
like a real business when it gets the
series being and I think some people
struggle with that you know they they
they just want to play with the product
still but when you’re serious be stages
it’s a lot more serious yeah it’s a
different level uh duh me one thing you
enter it just few minutes more and then
I let you go John I was stay here to
took four days but don’t we want thing
Robert F you entered a market which was
definitely no teasing at least in my
opinion I didn’t do homework about the
translation worldwide market but i think
is a huge market and it there are so
many players I mean I I think how many
translators or translating companies
there are all over the world I think
also you need to leader is one famous
translate the door or something like
that in roles yeah yeah yeah so um you
enter the market that was definitely not
easy uh have you ever thought about gosh
there are competitors that are too big
and there are there a lot of money when
you launch to you what was on you and
your co-founder it was just you know
that you follow your instinct or you
found an angle and each there was a
different was different from all the
other people the other companies were
doing what was your strength there yes
so I think you know one of the one of
the great things about being a start-up
founder is that you’re naive you know
you don’t know all the problems that are
ahead and if you did if you did you
might never start the company but i
think you know it’s the good thing
that’s why that’s why it’s good to be
naive sometimes certainly translation
market is huge it’s a 30 billion dollar
market you know there are some really
big players like lionbridge public
company in the u.s. sdl public company
in the UK and then you know thousands of
ounces of smaller agencies in between I
think you know we we’ve kind of been
we’ve been fortunate enough to be the
company that’s doing it our way we don’t
really come across competitors who are
doing it the gang go away you know there
might be someone who’s got like a great
tool for localization or someone who’s
good at delivering really high-end
taxation but in terms of people like us
delivering translation at scale at a
really good price point with an API you
know the list starts to narrow down to
very very few so we’re lucky enough you
know when we talk to a lot of customers
now is that we’re not really in a
pitching situation against those guys
but certainly you know there is a
competitive landscape certainly we are
sort of going to follow it against some
people certainly some of the big
incumbents are now getting more
interested in crowdsourcing right I
think that you know our approaches
always be don’t really look at the
competitors too much certainly don’t
look at them for guidance you know what
we try to just do it our way and we know
that by doing it again go away like
we’ve still got a lot of gangoh problems
to solve and so over the next year or
product roadmap is is about us and it’s
about our customers it’s not really
about dealing with a computer why not
being somewhere yeah so follow on
yourself yeah focus on what we’re really
good at and really own it and then the
last thing I would say is like you know
for any startup that’s trying to raise
bc and grow that way you’ve always got
to be in this market where you want the
market to be really big because it
demonstrates people are interested in it
demonstrates those customers there um
you know you don’t want to be too small
and uninteresting because it probably
means you can’t grow that much so
translation market for our seems like
you know it seems attractive and and
it’s definitely tough but it’s very very
interesting as well as very deep problem
space so I like it right Robert you were
talking about our API that I thank you
this very interesting because um I think
most of the companies traditional
companies they definitely don’t think
about first they probably don’t know
what a PIR if they not in the tech
industry but most of all I don’t think
they think that they can get translation
using an external service that ultimate
automagically I can give access to
translation so I think it’s very
interesting how is this gangoh API
working do you have any interesting case
studies or cases treated that you can
say wow that was really a great way to
use our API for translation
so you know firstly we launched the API
because we are tech people and we sort
of thought well everything has to have
an API you know and so the idea of like
putting human translators under an API
was just sort of a logical next step on
you know we launched it in 2010 since
then people have done all kinds of cool
stuff you know some of my some of my
favorites are just like the little side
projects that people do so some people
would they would integrate translation
into the development of their
application so they just be like
building stuff and it would
automatically send and get a translation
back you know we’ve done we’ve seen
other people do fun stuff like they
would they grab song lyrics for the top
10 and then get a translation of those
song lyrics and the back you know which
is always fun oh and then some of the
biggest staff is is really cool and
obviously you know we talked about
YouTube earlier that’s an API
integration like when we launched the
API wow you know to imagine that YouTube
would connect to that like that’s just
like a dream come true and we also have
companies that have things like
localization platforms and they’re using
the API to then order translation and
get it back again and send it to their
customers and so we work where the
company from Jordan called a quack quack
will help you serve up a proxy version
of your website are in two different
languages or phrase app for instance and
trans effect these guys have built grade
localization solutions on top of the
Ganga API and and we really love that
stuff because it’s not a case of me
going out and selling gang go to those
guys they were just looking around for a
translation API and then you know it
existed in Ganga like we love that stuff
because then they build their business
on top of our API and they kind of like
assume it exists in the same way that we
build our stuff on amazon web services
or other AP ice and like and I just love
that way the web connects like that you
don’t have services bill on services but
also like that also with YouTube I mean
or you just call Larry Larry and Sergey
and say Larry Larry I’m here i have the
API you can use it now on YouTube I say
old life are we great also because they
have their automatic translation that
never works by the way but is improving
I mean
so many data so how do you walk with
that Google Translate is a great tool
and actually the product manager of
google translate is the guy who put that
together with youtube and so you know he
you know he has a mission to help people
access translation throughout a bunch of
Google products and so that was
obviously a bit more of a long-winded
conversation and but it was you know
actually for working with a big company
that was pretty efficient like Google
they know how to build stuff great
developers you know we got that project
um pretty smoothly so yeah that would be
on the bigger end I guess a bit more
complicated end but but um you know I
still find out a lot of fun working this
with those kind of companies and with
just working with our enterprise
customers as well so there’s a bunch of
stuff like you know you’ll never see
it’s kind of private where even an
agency might be ordering translation
through us and serving it to their
customers or internally like a bigger
and price customer be using app and
that’s often really cool as well as just
it’s it’s cool too it’s cool when when
people are like oh a translation API
that’s really nice I never even knew
that I existed that one makes em so you
can build service startups or products
using your API and creating the user
interface for for the yeah so that
sounds very good what’s next for for
translations what do you think in the
next five years I’m always very I always
ask these questions about the future and
I know that the future who knows but
yeah what do you think will happen in
translations because there is this dream
of you know instantaneous translation in
every kind of language that you speak or
what you do everything and boom
everything is translated in every
language possible how far we are for a
real universal translation what do you
think yeah I mean certainly machine
translation has been ten years away for
the past 50 years or something so I
don’t see that I don’t see the instant
thing happening just in terms of pure
text and great quality translation
however I you know I do see a lot of
interesting stuff happening with
real-time translation just on like
Google glass or on your iPhone you know
we we work with a company called way go
have a great I phone app for just
instant translation like that I think
that kind of fun use of machine
translation where it’s just like giving
you a gist and combining that with video
or smartphones that that’s often that’s
obviously increasing and it’s obviously
really useful in terms of stuff that’s a
bit closer to us I would say we use
machine more and more and more and not
not in terms of really machine
translation but in hinting and
translation memories glossary that we
can give our translators so that you
know when you think about that example
of the guy using the smartphone on the
way to work so that that person she can
pull up a memory of what someone’s
translated before just point and click
and drop a word it and so she might be
able to translate something in half the
time and that that mixing of human rent
and machine and a point-and-click
smartphone in interface with a huge
crowd of people that’s that’s the way
we’re certainly going and that’s the way
we think you’re going to be able to
bring down the cost of translation
increase the speed of translation and so
that kind of near instant thing I can
still happen but at like a human quality
which means it’s publishable and it
means that it’s just a lot more usable
for everybody right Robert just last
question ah I asked to all my guests
what are the best two three apps that
they use on their a mobile every day
because you know you get the feeling of
what really people da very I’m working
right now I just said it I check is
interested okay I tell you the
categories that are not allowed so if
you have kids I’m having the fourth kid
soon so I have tones of topolino mickey
mouse games that no this is because are
the kids installing that and so but what
you really use for your productivity for
your business for your work or you think
that it is super cool now and you want
to share with us okay yeah I think I can
do that oh so first one is Geckoboard so
Gino Geckoboard yeah it’s like a
dashboard for them to visualize data yes
so we use Geckoboard in the office we
have like four
five screens like big screens in our new
office they show Geckoboard but also I
can get it on my phone as well and so I
can pull up dashboards and it’s like
it’s cool and the design is really
really nice that I’m just a sucker for
design because i’m a former designer so
Geckoboard would be my first one you
know I have to admit even though you
think I’m really good at Japanese I’m
still learning Japanese and so I have
this thing called mental case it’s like
a flashcard app and so mental cave has a
there’s a mac app on the on the laptop
and also iphone ipad and so you can sync
your flashcards and they do this like
spaced memory repetition technique where
when you’re learning stuff at the
beginning you you practice it very very
quickly again but after you’ve learned
it you the spaces are bigger so it’s
sort of a way of increasing your ability
to very interesting to me again the name
it’s called mental case mental case i’m
using google linger now that they are
interesting actually something similar
is a different technique it’s it’s a bit
different to Dueling go in the mental
case allows you to store anything so
it’s not really about language or
whatever it’s any kind of flashcards
like if you wanted to like take a course
or and anything I don’t know but I use
the Japanese you could use it for
learning like HTML terminology or
something crazy like that in all right
so many things oh wow and then the other
one is a bit more of an entertainment
one I’m sorry praise and like I love
this so much that I have to talk about
it is NBA game time oh and then NBA has
done this kind of amazing thing where
it’s actually easier and more convenient
to watch NBA games outside of the US
than it is in the US and so if they have
great for the iphone for the ipad is on
Apple TV you can subscribe to all games
for like 100 bucks a year and so in
Japan I can watch any NBA game I want
and what’s bad is i go to the US and
then if i try to watch it there i can’t
like they block it based on IP in the
u.s. because they want people to watch
on the TV so crazy so
I think that so excellent yeah super
cool super cool robber thank you thank
you so much good luck for everything and
the Sun is also shiny here in UK after
our interview so it’s a sign of nestle
did it I did it I love your haircut by
the way yeah it’s not you know we have
this kind of look that is hey is a Bruce
Willis star yeah great Robert thank you
so much gangoh guys just check gangoh
use it it is an amazing experience I can
really grant it and good luck for
everything wrong great thank you very much Marco see you later
digital domination summit and today
another great guest from japan the
founder of gang go robert lang a robber
hi going a manga how you doing excellent
every time you know that i have a new
interview is unbelievable there are
always problems you know and i’m doing
interviews with the most amazing
technical people in the world and there
is always problem you’d so this is
unbelievable the first person who will
invent a system to do easily these kind
of things will be a billionaire you know
because it’s unbelievable so many
technical takes to put together alright
but we did it and really I’m so happy to
talk with you today because I I’m really
a user of my gang go when the name was
still my gangin beginning and four guys
if you don’t know the the service just
go there check it out is unbelievable if
you need to get your things translated
i’ve been using ganga to translate
articles post short phrases short
sentences so I really always the was an
unbelievable service and I wanted to
talk with you Robert about gang go first
of all give us a little bit of context
of where is gang go now I mean how big
is the company what are you doing when
did you start just one minute in trouble
Ganga for our for the people watching
yeah sure so we started about four and a
half years ago in Tokyo founded the
company started doing the service in
about two thousand nine at that time we
were just two guys so me and my
co-founder Matthew raised a little bit
of money at the beginning of 2010 from
dave McClure 500 startups and now we’ve
grown the company since then to be about
35 people in Tokyo about 10 people in
san mateo Silicon Valley and we’ve
raised I guess sort of 19 million
dollars today which is prosto series be
around at the beginning of this year and
now you know a few months ago we
translated a hundred millionth word so
we’ve done 100 million words translation
to date so you know that growth curve
has been quite nice
and this year we’re just trying to do
more impressive but you not jump on his
Robert so I’ve been doing the biggest
girl female like but you know Japanese
right so why did you move in Japan I’m
okay at Japanese I don’t want to the
idea that i’m absolutely fluent or
anything like that certainly when i
moved here so I married my wife about
eight years ago and she’s Japanese but
she was living in London at the time so
we met and I thought would be kind of
fun to live in Japan and she was like
okay we’ll move back to Japan oh so he
moved to Japan about seven years ago and
really when I rides in Japan I didn’t
speak that good Japanese at all so the
language barrier for me was a real real
issue and also I was working on web
design projects with my co-founder of
Matthew so we were working on projects
and I was always needing some
translation and he had been in this
position at Sony where he has a half
Japanese half American guy was always
getting asked to do translation and so
we had these kind of two sides of the
same coin kind of thing and I ended up
like asking him to do translation and
asking my wife to do translation that’s
not really scalable and from his side he
was always getting annoyed about people
like me him to do translation all the
time so we just wanted to make a really
simple product that would are you know
solve that need that we both have right
tell me one thing Robert um if I go on
on gang go today I I just good here and
there is a nice interface where I just
say okay or I upload a file that I want
to translate for instance have a Google
document and I upload the dork or I just
input the text and I immediately get a
quote so I already know how much money
will spend for a translation yeah so
from the user point of view is always
for me at least it was always a magical
experience because i just upload my dear
my stuff got a quote yes we pay and then
I got the translation super fast from
someone that’s it and I always wonder
how can you make that so and I was
reading about your natural contra of
translators thousands of translators
did you build such a such a big network
number one yeah so I think I mean the
important thing as you mentioned like
the experiences is very instant it and
we wanted to model the experience that
you have like on Amazon you know if you
remember from before amazon you had to
go to the bookstore and choose the book
but from amazon is just like one click
and itunes one click right and before
gangoh came along getting a translation
human translation with one click was was
it possible right but we knew that it’s
one of these things where on the surface
it seems very very simple like above the
surface you’re like oh I just clicked
but underneath the service it’s actually
pretty complex so yeah we have 9,000
translators we knew that from the start
we were going to have to qualify these
translators like a lot of people can say
oh I’m a translator but are they any
good you need a test to figure that out
and so we implemented testing so anyone
who wants to become a translator a
kegger has to pass a two-stage testing
process and once they’ve gone through
that process they can then enter this
this pool and they get access to jobs
but the quality control isn’t over there
so we check the first job that they do
depending on the result of that they’ll
get check and subsequent more or less
times and basically our job is to make
sure to keep that quality consistent
regardless of whether you order like
today at 3pm or next week at 6pm or you
know whatever language you’re ordering
it’s our job to make sure that’s
consistent and so we do a lot of work
underneath to make it like a one click
option for the customer but so on one
side you you recruit a lot of
translators and you can select them and
you kind of verify the date good yeah
but how can you handle the the process I
mean when I what happened when I I send
a translation the translation is sent to
9000 translators or just a piece to beat
up to someone a bit to another one how
does it really work yeah so we offer
about 35 different languages or so so
there’ll be a specific pool of
translators for each language and then
within that whenever a customer orders a
job
used to be just first come first serve
so whichever translator was fastest at
clicking they would get the job but now
we’re a bit more sophisticated and so if
you’re a translator and you’ve got a
good quality score on the previous job
you’ll get better access or if you know
how to do jobs quickly and you got a
good quality score you’ll get even
higher access so there’s some
translators who get first access to jobs
but within that still is competitive and
so translators are really they have to
be pretty fast to click click employ
repair and we even have translators who
tried to build BOTS you know which will
scrape the page and then automatically
click the butt so we had to build all
this stuff around stopping the
translators but yeah it can be very
competitive but you know the good thing
about that is that the translators who
want to pick up something casual you
know they might be like on the bus on
the way to work and I can pick it up on
their smartphone and start translating
you know 200 word job they can do it
really easily and that means they’ve
made five bucks on there generally to
work as opposed to doing nothing so I
like there’s that easy access is pretty
good for let’s go how are you convincing
beginning translators to join the
platform because now is easy I mean you
say we are gang or we have this amazing
platform we have customers it’s easy but
in beginning how did you convince them
well you know we’ve always tried to be
we have a we have a one of our values is
by the people for the people right so
we’ve always tried to be as good to the
translators as we are to the customers
okay so as it as a translator
traditionally there was always a lot of
admin to do and so translate is you know
you know on our site we charge on a per
word basis on translate normally charge
on a per word faces but as a freelance
translator if you’re just charging per
word often you’re doing a lot of admin
like invoicing negotiating with clients
sending files back and forth like
answering comments all this kind of
stuff that is in really translation and
so what Ganga offered from the start was
this way to say well I don’t need to do
any of that admin I’ll just do simple
translation work and so for translators
that’s quite compelling you can sign up
on gang go for free it takes a bit of
time to take the tests but once you have
and once you past you can just say oh
got a bit of time we’ve got 20 20
minutes I can do a gang go job whereas
for other translation jobs that that 20
minutes of translating would include
maybe half an hour of admin time so they
wouldn’t really be making as much money
so to be appealing to translate as if
that way has always been important the
other thing we’ve always done is we’ve
always paid consistently like every two
weeks so we never miss translates
whereas if a translator works directly
for a customer they don’t know the
customer might pay them on time they
might not play them at all you know they
never really know so so being very very
consistent with translators has also
helped us but on you know also I think a
lot of translators who work for us they
just want to try something new you know
their internet savvy people they’re
trying to you know have some fun maybe
do some easier work and they only do
like a lot of the content that we
translate is kind of fun so it’s a lot
more fun for the translator to work for
us sometimes then to work for their
normal job that’s interesting let’s talk
about customers now think about a
company that need to be international I
live in UK but I’m Italian as you
understand for my British accent and
that the funny thing is that if I think
about countries like Italy I don’t know
wait by the way you added Italian
language in in the very beginning and
that that’s one of the reason why I
started to use gangoh stripe straight
away why did you add Italian then only
we tell your speaking and people in
Swiss I think you know a little bottles
with wide Italia Italia is actually very
popular language for our customers to
translate and so in the transition world
a lot of people say things it’s a big it
means French Italian German Spanish okay
so talons in there we also had quite a
few larger enterprise customers early on
who wanted to do Italian and you know
just one of those things where it’s it’s
it’s about their it’s not all most
popular language I would say the most
popular right now would still be
Japanese we do a lot of Chinese Spanish
Russian Portuguese but but Italians up
there so yeah you shouldn’t be too shy
about your language cool so tell me one
thing if I’m a company
one big question today is I need to go
international but going international
means doing a lot of localization things
for for your website and for everything
you do and one of this aspect obviously
is related with translations what are
your best tips having the opportunity to
watch during these years all the
translations made for so many companies
from so many people what are your best
tips to companies that really want to go
international and they need to translate
I mean where do they start from which
kind of languages choose from I mean do
you have any specific tips on this yeah
that’s a huge question by the way but
like you said you know first of all we
speak to a lot of companies that go
global at different stages different
sized companies all that kind of thing
normally you know my general advice is
be smart about it know that it’s a risk
and so like whenever you go into
national it’s not all roses right and so
we encourage people to try if they’re
just starting out just to test little
bits of content you know you don’t need
to translate your whole website and all
your documentation and try us a little
bits of content and you can do that
especially if you’ve got interested
users overseas who are already trying
your product without it being localized
those are the best guys to try with and
so HootSuite which probably knows the
Twitter management they did that very
successfully in Japan they had some
users who were trying out the product
already so they got those guys to be
advocates and testers for the service as
well the other thing I would say is that
there’s different kinds of content on
the website and so if you think about it
if you’re if you go to coca-cola calm
the big brand message on the front
that’s something that’s very very
difficult to translate and it needs to
be super high quality and it really
needs to be done by someone who truly
understands your business whereas they
might have lots and lots of subsidiary
pages with like user reviews or message
or content or you know little articles
that aren’t quite as high level so you
should need to pay as much to translate
that kind of content and so we work with
customers are often who they might use
an agency
this really high level content on the
homepage for the advertising for the
message from the CEO may be that they
use gangoh for thousands of product
descriptions or user reviews or lots of
articles on other pages and so you’ve
got to think as a customer okay what are
the tears of content that I’m going to
translate so you can be smart about how
much you spend on each tier of content
the other thing we look about with
customers yeah is that you can you can
yeah as we said test out stuff quite
quickly but you’ve got to be confident
that your if you if the test file is
through it’s going to be worth it and so
we just try to get customers to plan
their content a lot more than they might
if they didn’t talk to us you know
because the the last thing you want is
is people translating to march feeling
like it cost too much money when they
could have just tried out a little bit
of contact first oh yeah we mean we can
talk to customers about this stuff all
the time and and the other the last
thing I would say is um testing doing
language by language is better than
trying to do like 15 languages at once
you know because translating and
localizing your site and getting all
that technology ready it can be
overwhelming if you try to do like 30
languages launched just trying like one
language and getting that process down
that’s smart and then you can expect
that Robert how can I one stupid doctor
that I always had I’m I had for instance
lot of videos that I got transcribe and
then I went on gang go to get a
translation and for some of those videos
I asked for translation in Chinese or
languages that have no idea yeah the
translation is right or not so every
time I thought I trust gangoh because
you did the selection but I have no idea
if it’s written something about you know
kooky while i’m talking about the
ecology or not how are you verify how
can you be sure that the translation is
really matching your content in original
language so i guess we actually have
three times three types of users and so
one type they know the language there
are native speaker in that language so
they can check it another type they
often have some
in their company or in their team who
they can check it with and then the last
group I would say often they they’ll use
their users you know if you’ve got a
YouTube video and it’s for the Chinese
market you ask your users is this good
and often you’ll find people who can
help you either verify or they’ll
correct it if it’s no good but yeah
getting the users as that final check is
often like a really good really good way
to check we’re thinking of introducing
something in the future that will allow
our customers to do that but obviously
that the problem is you know we’re the
ones doing the translation so if we sort
of say oh we also checked your
translation it was good but you know how
can you trust us anyway but but yeah
using the users and asking the users
often you get very very honest feedback
risers can most critical so so they’re
probably the the final judge uh what
happened with the videos i think
sometimes ago I spot a kind of
partnership with YouTube where you could
get your video and translated using gang
go straight from the YouTube interface I
I didn’t really see it around so maybe
it was my my mistake I didn’t really
check that again but what’s happening
with video because a lot of companies
now producing videos and they want the
videos to be translated and and i would
say until a few years ago it was really
a pain in the ass because to translate a
video was a nightmare so tightly that
item and so on what’s your recipe for
that well yeah obviously subtitling
tools have moved on massively and so
you’ve got you know YouTube itself
you’ve got Amara you’ve got other people
offering like dots are some really good
subtitling tools and then Vicky which
you might have seen a company solely
focused on crowdsourcing translation of
subtitles was acquired by racket and a
few weeks ago for two hundred million
dollars so there’s there’s a lot of
excitement in that space we you know we
did a partnership with YouTube at the
beginning of this year so now any when
we just launched it might have only been
available to a few people but but now
any YouTube content owner who has a
transcription of their their content can
order translation through YouTube and so
that’s a sort of one or two clicks
solution
it’s very racing this you order the
translation gets put back into the
YouTube automatically you can share it
straight away and since the launch
that’s been pretty popular with our
customers the other thing we do is we
also sorry sorry Robert so it means that
if I’m on youtube I got my game
transcribed yeah i just ordered a
translation and if the translation go
went once I accepted go back straight to
my youtube video so i don’t have to
upload captioning or captions and so on
yeah that’s right i want to see if I’ve
got a page for that anyway it’s on it’s
on our website but yet it’s within the
YouTube you I yeah so there’ll be a it’s
a little button that says request
translation and just click it right
there and it’s pretty cool I really hope
it works for you I it isn’t what is but
that’s been pretty good and then that’s
obviously you sort of see to see or
prosumer video makers like yourself I
guess and then for enterprise customers
we also work with a partner called
3-play media and so they’ll do the whole
thing if you need lots and lots of
videos to be transcribed and then
translate you can do that through three
play and Ganga and so frost it’s become
a pretty popular area I would say like a
year and a half ago we weren’t really
doing much video at all and now it’s you
know it’s quite significantly impressed
so what we’re doing for translators is
creating better tools for translators so
that they can do translations of
subtitles better now there you go baby
yeah is this wonder the player UDS
against translation perfect young that’s
the page on our site and then um you
know if you go into YouTube as a Content
owner you can basically just get it from
there so this just explains how the
process works and you know it’s pretty
stressful once you’ve created your
captions yeah also because otherwise you
know you have to every time I translate
stuff is I get the transcription then I
have to go on your website or to make it
translate and then I have to go to
upload the caption file but so yeah
definitely air is it makes much more
sense very interesting yeah we love this
you know working with go
all is great and we we have a few more
things that we’re going to be able to
announce with Google in the future so
you know this frost is a really good
example of bringing translation really
really close to the customer like if
you’re on YouTube in your content owner
you don’t really even need to know that
gangoh exists and you can get
translation and it’s just a couple that
sounds yeah perfect determinant another
thing Robert just changing topic you you
said you you received finally a large
amount of funding and so I was thinking
about the start of listening to to our
chart here and obviously when you
launched having dave mcclure which is a
very family’s invest or 100 startups
obviously per 500 startups obviously
helps but I mean then then you
definitely went a long way because you
get a good funding uh what’s your again
could you elaborate on that what are you
best three tips to to startups looking
for funding I was just moderating
TechCrunch Disrupt in Italy and everyone
talking about you know how difficult is
to get funded but on the other side if
you have good numbers interactions Wow
then you can get the right investor but
not the not all the investors of the
right well so is a huge topic again but
from your experience I mean that you
lived on your skier what are your case
we obviously had kind of a unique
experience because we’re kind of like
non-japanese people in Tokyo with a
startup that you know we have a
japan-based company but actually it’s a
u.s. Delaware company with a Japanese
subsidiary and so it’s like we could
sort of raise money from Japan we could
sort of raise money from the US a lot of
us Silicon Valley bc’s don’t like
companies that aren’t in Silicon Valley
I mean that’s the truth you know you
know oh so we had to do this kind of
global fund raising thing and and like
we were very lucky to find atomico which
is the company that did the fund that
did our series a you know they there
xscape guys you know so so they all
understand global from the star and also
they had a you know they had a desire to
see Japan succeed for startups and so
you know we we certainly talked to a lot
of VCS over the lifetime with gangoh you
know and and sometimes we were
fundraising it very good circumstances
sometimes not so good you know and and I
think I guess my first tip would be that
are the the know the maybe is never
really going to turn it to the yes the
people who really like your business
really want to invest they’re going to
be excited about it from the start and
so as an entrepreneur it’s very tempting
to listen to avicii who’s who’s just
saying like yeah we’re kind of
interested oh that means I might you
know but like when they’re interested i
found that they’ll really go for it you
know and and you’ve got to remember that
so i’ll be my first tip i don’t know my
second tip would be if you if you’re not
an English speaker yet speaking English
and speak English pretty well is a
massive boost for fundraising like
because you know most pcs in the world
are in Silicon Valley they get to pick
whatever company they want to invest in
and so you know if they are not able to
communicate in English you’re really
cutting down your fundraising options
massively even if you’ve got a great
business you know and then I guess the
third thing I would say is that as we’ve
gone through stages as a business things
just change things change about what
investors are looking for so at the
angel stage or the seed stage you know
they’re really just kind of looking like
is this an idea that’s kind of
interesting you know is the founding
team a really good founding team and
that’s all they can really judge on
whereas when you get up to series be
staged it gets a lot more serious
nowadays you can’t you know you can’t
just have a bunch of users you’ve got to
have some kind of traction you know I
deal in revenue and and you’re really
looking at the company from a sort of
set of fundamentals you know what is
what’s the income statement look like
what is your business really look like
in terms of a revenue and you know when
you reach profitability is that an
interesting business can it can it scale
in the way that we like is it invested
so you have to if you want to stay on
top of things as an entrepreneur you’ve
got to go through those stages and you
can’t just rely on the same sort of fun
and quirky stuff that people like at the
scene stage you’ve got to be operating
like a real business when it gets the
series being and I think some people
struggle with that you know they they
they just want to play with the product
still but when you’re serious be stages
it’s a lot more serious yeah it’s a
different level uh duh me one thing you
enter it just few minutes more and then
I let you go John I was stay here to
took four days but don’t we want thing
Robert F you entered a market which was
definitely no teasing at least in my
opinion I didn’t do homework about the
translation worldwide market but i think
is a huge market and it there are so
many players I mean I I think how many
translators or translating companies
there are all over the world I think
also you need to leader is one famous
translate the door or something like
that in roles yeah yeah yeah so um you
enter the market that was definitely not
easy uh have you ever thought about gosh
there are competitors that are too big
and there are there a lot of money when
you launch to you what was on you and
your co-founder it was just you know
that you follow your instinct or you
found an angle and each there was a
different was different from all the
other people the other companies were
doing what was your strength there yes
so I think you know one of the one of
the great things about being a start-up
founder is that you’re naive you know
you don’t know all the problems that are
ahead and if you did if you did you
might never start the company but i
think you know it’s the good thing
that’s why that’s why it’s good to be
naive sometimes certainly translation
market is huge it’s a 30 billion dollar
market you know there are some really
big players like lionbridge public
company in the u.s. sdl public company
in the UK and then you know thousands of
ounces of smaller agencies in between I
think you know we we’ve kind of been
we’ve been fortunate enough to be the
company that’s doing it our way we don’t
really come across competitors who are
doing it the gang go away you know there
might be someone who’s got like a great
tool for localization or someone who’s
good at delivering really high-end
taxation but in terms of people like us
delivering translation at scale at a
really good price point with an API you
know the list starts to narrow down to
very very few so we’re lucky enough you
know when we talk to a lot of customers
now is that we’re not really in a
pitching situation against those guys
but certainly you know there is a
competitive landscape certainly we are
sort of going to follow it against some
people certainly some of the big
incumbents are now getting more
interested in crowdsourcing right I
think that you know our approaches
always be don’t really look at the
competitors too much certainly don’t
look at them for guidance you know what
we try to just do it our way and we know
that by doing it again go away like
we’ve still got a lot of gangoh problems
to solve and so over the next year or
product roadmap is is about us and it’s
about our customers it’s not really
about dealing with a computer why not
being somewhere yeah so follow on
yourself yeah focus on what we’re really
good at and really own it and then the
last thing I would say is like you know
for any startup that’s trying to raise
bc and grow that way you’ve always got
to be in this market where you want the
market to be really big because it
demonstrates people are interested in it
demonstrates those customers there um
you know you don’t want to be too small
and uninteresting because it probably
means you can’t grow that much so
translation market for our seems like
you know it seems attractive and and
it’s definitely tough but it’s very very
interesting as well as very deep problem
space so I like it right Robert you were
talking about our API that I thank you
this very interesting because um I think
most of the companies traditional
companies they definitely don’t think
about first they probably don’t know
what a PIR if they not in the tech
industry but most of all I don’t think
they think that they can get translation
using an external service that ultimate
automagically I can give access to
translation so I think it’s very
interesting how is this gangoh API
working do you have any interesting case
studies or cases treated that you can
say wow that was really a great way to
use our API for translation
so you know firstly we launched the API
because we are tech people and we sort
of thought well everything has to have
an API you know and so the idea of like
putting human translators under an API
was just sort of a logical next step on
you know we launched it in 2010 since
then people have done all kinds of cool
stuff you know some of my some of my
favorites are just like the little side
projects that people do so some people
would they would integrate translation
into the development of their
application so they just be like
building stuff and it would
automatically send and get a translation
back you know we’ve done we’ve seen
other people do fun stuff like they
would they grab song lyrics for the top
10 and then get a translation of those
song lyrics and the back you know which
is always fun oh and then some of the
biggest staff is is really cool and
obviously you know we talked about
YouTube earlier that’s an API
integration like when we launched the
API wow you know to imagine that YouTube
would connect to that like that’s just
like a dream come true and we also have
companies that have things like
localization platforms and they’re using
the API to then order translation and
get it back again and send it to their
customers and so we work where the
company from Jordan called a quack quack
will help you serve up a proxy version
of your website are in two different
languages or phrase app for instance and
trans effect these guys have built grade
localization solutions on top of the
Ganga API and and we really love that
stuff because it’s not a case of me
going out and selling gang go to those
guys they were just looking around for a
translation API and then you know it
existed in Ganga like we love that stuff
because then they build their business
on top of our API and they kind of like
assume it exists in the same way that we
build our stuff on amazon web services
or other AP ice and like and I just love
that way the web connects like that you
don’t have services bill on services but
also like that also with YouTube I mean
or you just call Larry Larry and Sergey
and say Larry Larry I’m here i have the
API you can use it now on YouTube I say
old life are we great also because they
have their automatic translation that
never works by the way but is improving
I mean
so many data so how do you walk with
that Google Translate is a great tool
and actually the product manager of
google translate is the guy who put that
together with youtube and so you know he
you know he has a mission to help people
access translation throughout a bunch of
Google products and so that was
obviously a bit more of a long-winded
conversation and but it was you know
actually for working with a big company
that was pretty efficient like Google
they know how to build stuff great
developers you know we got that project
um pretty smoothly so yeah that would be
on the bigger end I guess a bit more
complicated end but but um you know I
still find out a lot of fun working this
with those kind of companies and with
just working with our enterprise
customers as well so there’s a bunch of
stuff like you know you’ll never see
it’s kind of private where even an
agency might be ordering translation
through us and serving it to their
customers or internally like a bigger
and price customer be using app and
that’s often really cool as well as just
it’s it’s cool too it’s cool when when
people are like oh a translation API
that’s really nice I never even knew
that I existed that one makes em so you
can build service startups or products
using your API and creating the user
interface for for the yeah so that
sounds very good what’s next for for
translations what do you think in the
next five years I’m always very I always
ask these questions about the future and
I know that the future who knows but
yeah what do you think will happen in
translations because there is this dream
of you know instantaneous translation in
every kind of language that you speak or
what you do everything and boom
everything is translated in every
language possible how far we are for a
real universal translation what do you
think yeah I mean certainly machine
translation has been ten years away for
the past 50 years or something so I
don’t see that I don’t see the instant
thing happening just in terms of pure
text and great quality translation
however I you know I do see a lot of
interesting stuff happening with
real-time translation just on like
Google glass or on your iPhone you know
we we work with a company called way go
have a great I phone app for just
instant translation like that I think
that kind of fun use of machine
translation where it’s just like giving
you a gist and combining that with video
or smartphones that that’s often that’s
obviously increasing and it’s obviously
really useful in terms of stuff that’s a
bit closer to us I would say we use
machine more and more and more and not
not in terms of really machine
translation but in hinting and
translation memories glossary that we
can give our translators so that you
know when you think about that example
of the guy using the smartphone on the
way to work so that that person she can
pull up a memory of what someone’s
translated before just point and click
and drop a word it and so she might be
able to translate something in half the
time and that that mixing of human rent
and machine and a point-and-click
smartphone in interface with a huge
crowd of people that’s that’s the way
we’re certainly going and that’s the way
we think you’re going to be able to
bring down the cost of translation
increase the speed of translation and so
that kind of near instant thing I can
still happen but at like a human quality
which means it’s publishable and it
means that it’s just a lot more usable
for everybody right Robert just last
question ah I asked to all my guests
what are the best two three apps that
they use on their a mobile every day
because you know you get the feeling of
what really people da very I’m working
right now I just said it I check is
interested okay I tell you the
categories that are not allowed so if
you have kids I’m having the fourth kid
soon so I have tones of topolino mickey
mouse games that no this is because are
the kids installing that and so but what
you really use for your productivity for
your business for your work or you think
that it is super cool now and you want
to share with us okay yeah I think I can
do that oh so first one is Geckoboard so
Gino Geckoboard yeah it’s like a
dashboard for them to visualize data yes
so we use Geckoboard in the office we
have like four
five screens like big screens in our new
office they show Geckoboard but also I
can get it on my phone as well and so I
can pull up dashboards and it’s like
it’s cool and the design is really
really nice that I’m just a sucker for
design because i’m a former designer so
Geckoboard would be my first one you
know I have to admit even though you
think I’m really good at Japanese I’m
still learning Japanese and so I have
this thing called mental case it’s like
a flashcard app and so mental cave has a
there’s a mac app on the on the laptop
and also iphone ipad and so you can sync
your flashcards and they do this like
spaced memory repetition technique where
when you’re learning stuff at the
beginning you you practice it very very
quickly again but after you’ve learned
it you the spaces are bigger so it’s
sort of a way of increasing your ability
to very interesting to me again the name
it’s called mental case mental case i’m
using google linger now that they are
interesting actually something similar
is a different technique it’s it’s a bit
different to Dueling go in the mental
case allows you to store anything so
it’s not really about language or
whatever it’s any kind of flashcards
like if you wanted to like take a course
or and anything I don’t know but I use
the Japanese you could use it for
learning like HTML terminology or
something crazy like that in all right
so many things oh wow and then the other
one is a bit more of an entertainment
one I’m sorry praise and like I love
this so much that I have to talk about
it is NBA game time oh and then NBA has
done this kind of amazing thing where
it’s actually easier and more convenient
to watch NBA games outside of the US
than it is in the US and so if they have
great for the iphone for the ipad is on
Apple TV you can subscribe to all games
for like 100 bucks a year and so in
Japan I can watch any NBA game I want
and what’s bad is i go to the US and
then if i try to watch it there i can’t
like they block it based on IP in the
u.s. because they want people to watch
on the TV so crazy so
I think that so excellent yeah super
cool super cool robber thank you thank
you so much good luck for everything and
the Sun is also shiny here in UK after
our interview so it’s a sign of nestle
did it I did it I love your haircut by
the way yeah it’s not you know we have
this kind of look that is hey is a Bruce
Willis star yeah great Robert thank you
so much gangoh guys just check gangoh
use it it is an amazing experience I can
really grant it and good luck for
everything wrong great thank you very much Marco see you later
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