Featured Startup Pitch: One Hour Translation is on a mission to bring quick, accurate translation to websites around the world

By Yaron Kaufman, One Hour Translation co-founder and Vice President of Marketing

Elevator Pitch: One Hour Translation, the web’s largest professional translation service, provides professional human translation to businesses around the world. Using a community of over 15,000 translators, we translate to 75 different languages. Most recently, One Hour Translation launched WeST, a unique software solution for website translation. WeST enables seamless localization and updates for any website.

Product Overview

Due to a robust community of certified translators from 100 countries, One Hour Translation provides high-quality professional translation on a 24/7 basis. Companies prefer One Hour Translation because they receive human translation in a very efficient, timely and affordable way.

One Hour Translation’s service is primarily B2B-focused with customers ranging from startups to multi-national corporations in a wide variety of industries such as legal, finance, high-tech, media and advertising, automotive, tourism, and travel.

One Hour Translation is powered by advanced technologies that streamlines all translation requests directly to appropriate translators, providing customers with the most accurate, efficient, and cost-effective service. The company’s newest product, WeST, adds multi-lingual support to any website in a very simple way. Site administrators simply paste the WeST code onto their website and select the localization method, such as professional human translation, machine translation, crowd-sourced translation, or translation using their own resources. WeST quickly maps all the site text and automatically sends it to be translated, taking into account the specifications made by the site administrator. In addition, as the website is updated, any new text added is immediately sent for translation so that the site is continuously being translated on an ongoing basis. The resulting service provides businesses with seamless and continuous translation, human or machine, that requires little-to-no maintenance.

Founders’ Story

I had a successful financial blog in the mid-late 2000s, but I wanted to attract more international readers. I searched for a web-based service that would quickly and professionally translate my content into multiple languages. Realizing there was no such solution, it motivated me to create One Hour Translation.

I soon realized that businesses need an enormous amount of content translated every day. The increase in globalization and the move from print to online has only increased the trend, extending the need for translated materials. Businesses are realizing that reaching international audiences increases their bottom line due to the large number of potential clients or customers that are not native English speakers.

The primary reason that I, along with the other co-founders, chose to create One Hour Translation was because the current need was not being properly addressed by traditional translation agencies. The goal in creating One Hour Translation was to build the largest professional translation service online, which has been accomplished today, and later become the largest professional translation service in the world.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

We chose to focus marketing efforts online. Although One Hour Translation caters to both traditional and online businesses, we found that online marketing reaches a broader audience and yields a larger growth rate. Many businesses, both large and small, search online for professional translation solutions, therefore the choice to promote online was natural.

Market Opportunity

Businesses are always seeking innovative, efficient ways to expand into new markets. When growing a business, it’s vital to exude professionalism in order to gain customer trust. Professional human translation, done by native-speakers of the target language, provides accurate translation that reflects cultural context, making it the optimal choice for businesses. Using professional human translators, translation and localization projects can be completed in a timely manner, making it ideal for businesses, both large and small, to adopt translation as part of their business plan.

How We Differentiate From the Competition

One Hour Translation is leveraging technology to make human translation more efficient and available for both offline and online businesses, helping companies go global and increase ROI. With One Hour Translation, the process is streamlined using advanced technologies to provide fast, high-quality human translations at a low cost. The new WeST technology is the first of its kind—a hassle-free solution for website localization that enables companies to reach global customers, efficiently. The combination of the community of professional translators and advanced technology gives customers a high-quality localization and translation solution they can trust.

Business Model

One Hour Translation offers a flat-rate pricing model starting from $0.07 per word for general translation to any language. Unlike traditional translation services that charge additional fees for project management, uncommon languages, and urgent translations, One Hour Translation’s customers only pay for the number of words they choose to have translated. The service is available 24/7, and is considered the fastest online professional translation service in the world.

Current Needs

One Hour Translation is always looking to recruit software engineers, account managers and professional translators.

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Website: www.onehourtranslation.com

Headquarters: Cyprus

Founders: Lior Libman, Yaron Kaufman, Ofer Shoshan, Oren Yagev

Year Founded: 2008

Investors: Bootstrapped (profitable)

Employees: 60, plus 15,000 active translators

Facebook: facebook.com/onehourtranslation

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/onehourtranslation.com