Transfluent Turns 5!

Transfluent turns 5 years old! It feels both like it has been a very long time, and a very short time since we began. On one hand, it feels like we just got started. How can it be 5 years already?? But then again so many things have happened that it’s hard to believe it has all happened in just five years!

At the end of this blog post you will find a discount code for 5% off for all your orders during September 2016!

We officially launched at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on September 12, 2011. Of course we have been building the backend systems from the beginning of 2011 but very early on the service was called PremiumFanPage. Until the launch in September, nobody had heard of the name Transfluent.

And speaking of the name, just couple weeks before the launch we still didn’t have one. We did the usual approach of trying to find domain names that are available and somehow relate to translation industry. Babel-something, lingo-something, etc. Nothing good emerged. Until finally Wili Miettinen, one of our board members, found that the Transfluent.com domain was for sale. I think we paid about $200 for it but I would have paid a lot more if I had to. At that instant I knew it was a perfect name, and it has served us well!

History

It has been an eventful ride! Our focus has shifted quite a bit, in search of the perfect business model. When we launched, we only translated tweets. Our first big customer in 2012 was the re-election campaign of President Obama. We translated presidential tweets from English to Spanish with less than 5-minute turnaround time.

Towards the end of 2012 we opened an office in California. Our next big moment came in May 2013 when Thirty Seconds To Mars used Transfluent as part of the launch of their new album, Love, Lust, Faith and Dreams. We translated both the band’s official Facebook and Twitter streams as well as the lead singer Jared Leto’s personal streams into some 20 languages to accommodate their world tour and the need to communicate with fans. It was really amazing to see the reaction from fans in places like Poland, shocked and in disbelief that their idols were talking to them in Polish.

The past couple of years has seen our business grow steadily. We are working with some of the biggest companies in the world, but also some of the smallest startups. We have helped many Finnish game developers reach the top of the charts around the world. We have localized Batman comic books and Harlequin novels. We have translated patent applications into Chinese and customer service messages into Japanese.

Every day I find myself amazed at what Transfluent can do. It’s kind of like a science fiction machine, powered by real people. If there is a way to translate something, we can do it. The fact that the entire process of resource allocation is automated allows us to be extremely efficient. For example, a median time it takes for a Russian translation task to be picked up by a translator from the moment a customer has submitted it on our Translation Widget? About one minute!

Today

We have transformed into a full service translation agency. Our translators are the same freelancers that work for all of the leading translation companies in the world. At the end of the day it is the same pool of people doing the work. Since our operations are more efficient we are able to pay a little more to translators than our competitors. This gives us an edge as the best translators are more likely to work for us if they have a choice, meaning better quality for our clients.

But that aside, the real competitive advantage comes from the user experience. We have always placed excellent customer support as our number one value. No matter if you’re a big corporation or a small startup, we go above and beyond to fulfill your needs, around the clock. Since our operation runs on an automated platform, we can do things most translation providers cannot: we give instant quotes, we handle virtually all file formats with no need to convert, we provide an API for easy integration, and we provide translations virtually as fast as humanly possible.

You could say we are acting as a translation department for our clients. We are there for you when you need us, any time of day, in any language, for any type of translation task.

The Future

As we move forward, we have started working with small local translation companies, providing them with the same tools as we use to run our operations. Simply put, we give the small guys the tools to outpower the biggest translation companies. We give them an access to the world’s largest resource of translators. Effectively, you can run a translation company on Transfluent’s platform without having any translators of your own. You focus on sales and consultation, and we do the work.

We are the future of translation industry.

5% off discount code

Last but not least, the discount code. This code works with all orders placed in our super-easy-to-use translation widget. Just upload some files, choose languages and boom – you’re done. The last page in the order process asks for a discount code. Enter this: TF5YRS

This code can be used multiple times and it will work through the whole month. If you have anything to translate in the nearish future, now is a perfect time to give Transfluent a try!

This post was originally published in the Transfluent blog.