logo image
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • Design Thinking – February 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs
MENU
  • News
    • People Moves
    • Deal Wins
    • Demand Drivers
    • M&A and Funding
    • Financial Results
    • Technology
    • Academia
    • Industry News
    • Features
    • Machine Translation
    • — Divider —
    • Slator Pro
    • — Divider —
    • Press Releases
    • Sponsored Content
  • Data & Research
    • Research Reports & Pro Guides
    • Language Industry Investor Map
    • Real-Time Charts of Listed LSPs
    • Language Service Provider Index
  • Podcasts & Videos
  • Events
    • Design Thinking – February 2021
    • — Divider —
    • SlatorCon Coverage
    • Other Events
  • Directory
  • RFP Center
  • Jobs

Advertise on Slator! Download the 2021 Online Media Kit Now

  • Slator Market Intelligence
  • Slator Advertising Services
  • Slator Advisory
  • Login
Search
Generic filters
Exact matches only
Advertisement
Insatiable Appetite for Language Data a Boon for Niche Providers

2 years ago

November 26, 2018

Insatiable Appetite for Language Data a Boon for Niche Providers

Demand Drivers ·

by Gino Diño

On November 26, 2018

2 years ago
Demand Drivers ·

by Gino Diño

On November 26, 2018

Insatiable Appetite for Language Data a Boon for Niche Providers

The artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning boom is reflected not only in developments in neural machine translation (NMT), but also in the growing revenues of language data providers.

Slator’s NMT report 2018 noted “reinvigorated demand for high quality training corpora.” Language service providers (LSPs) have their own datasets—like Linguee’s one billion translations that power DeepL and Translated.net’s currently 4.4 billion human contributions in MyMemory.

Those who do not have their own datasets can get access from providers, such as Appen or Flitto—both of which are experiencing upwards growth curves.

Advertisement

Appen Ups Guidance

Australian company Appen announced an update to their 2018 full year guidance last November 15, noting that “full year underlying EBITDA for FY2018… is estimated to be in the range of USD62m to USD65m.” This is up from the company’s previous guidance of USD54m to USD59m.

Listed in the Sydney Stock Exchange, Appen is a provider of annotated datasets for artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. The company has two divisions: a Language Resources Division that trains AI engines with audio, text, image and video datasets, and a Content Relevance Division that uses human evaluation and feedback to help clients train AI driven products (mainly search engines).

Since its 2015 IPO Appen shares have been on a tear, coinciding with what some have labelled artificial intelligence’s third wave. Slator began covering Appen as early as 2016, when the company’s shares were up 500% since the IPO. At the end of the year, Appen logged a 34% year-on-year increase in revenues to AUD111m (USD85m).

At the close of the first half of 2017, the AI and machine learning boom continued to lift Appen’s results by 39% YoY to AUD 74.1m (USD 58.8m). Full year 2017 results saw the company reach a 50.1% YoY growth to AUD 166.6m (USD 130m), not to mention breaking through a billion (Aussie) dollars in market cap.

By the first half of 2018, Appen 6-months revenues jumped 106% to AUD 152.8m (USD 112.3m) on the back of its acquisition of competitor Leapforce. Finally, Appen also recently brought in a new Chief Technology Officer: Wilson Pang, previously Chief Data Officer of China’s CTrip, one of the world’s largest online travel agencies.

For investors, meanwhile, their bet on Appen has paid off handsomely over the past twelve months with shares up nearly 120%, pushing the company’s market cap to nearly USD 1 billion.

Flitto Sells Segments

Appen is not the only one riding the AI and machine learning boom on an upwards growth curve. South Korean company Flitto began as a translation crowdsourcing platform in 2012. The company leveraged the translation data it generated—around 100 million sets of translated language data—and by 2017, 80% of its revenues came from selling this language data to companies like Microsoft, NTT DoCoMo, and Baidu.

Flitto is now branding itself as a more well-rounded and generalist—but still very much tech-oriented—LSP. Along with selling training data (text, voice, and image), the company’s main business lines include language services (crowdsourced and professional translations) and tech integrations via API.

In October 2018, Flitto was reportedly benefitting from servicing digital entertainment companies and the content they push out on platforms like Youtube.

According to a news report, Flitto’s sales of translated language data grew from 2.1 million units in 2015, 4.76 million in 2016, 6.89 million in 2017, and finally 30 million in 2018. Also by the end of this year, Flitto expects to generate 200 million sets of translated language data.

Flitto’s revenues reflect the growth: from KRW 400 million (USD 0.36m) in 2015 to KRW 1.4 billion won (USD 1.2m) in 2016, KRW 2.5 billion (USD 2.2m) in 2017, and KRW 5 billion (USD 4.4m) as of August 2018. CEO Simon Lee expects this year’s sales to reach KRW 7 billion (USD 6.2m).

Data Hunger

The demand for data is starting to hit a crunch: Korea’s largest telecom company, KT Corp. found this out for themselves when on January 2017, KT launched GiGA Genie, an AI-powered voice assistant that responds to commands in English and Korean.

The service had gained a million subscribers by July 2018 and KT intended to increase that to 1.5 million by the end of 2018. “The biggest difficulty has been acquiring sufficient data on languages,” according to Kang Da-Som, a Manager at KT Corp.

Finally, even Lionbridge, one of the world’s largest LSPs, has begun to market its existing business in supplying and curating language data in a new Machine Intelligence division.

TAGS

Appenartificial intelligenceFlittoKT Corplanguage dataLionbridgemachine learningneural machine translation
SHARE
Gino Diño

By Gino Diño

Content strategy expert and Online Editor for Slator; father, husband, gamer, writer―not necessarily in that order.

Advertisement

SUBSCRIBE TO THE SLATOR WEEKLY

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

SUBSCRIBE

SlatorSweepSlatorPro
ResearchRFP CENTER

PUBLISH

PRESS RELEASEDIRECTORY LISTING
JOB ADEVENT LISTING

Bespoke advisory including speaking, briefings and M&A

SLATOR ADVISORY
Advertisement

Featured Reports

See all
Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

Slator 2020 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report

by Slator

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

Slator 2021 Data-for-AI Market Report

by Slator

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

Slator 2020 Medtech Translation and Localization Report

by Slator

Pro Guide: Sales and Marketing for Language Service Providers

Pro Guide: Sales and Marketing for Language Service Providers

by Slator

Press Releases

See all
XTRF Launches a Bi-Monthly Free Networking Event for Localization Professionals

XTRF Launches a Bi-Monthly Free Networking Event for Localization Professionals

by XTRF

150 Million Words Translated: the German EU Council Presidency Translator Sets New Records

150 Million Words Translated: the German EU Council Presidency Translator Sets New Records

by Tilde

BeLazy Announces Full Automation for Plunet

BeLazy Announces Full Automation for Plunet

by BeLazy

Upcoming Events

See All
  1. Memsource MT Post-Editing Pricing Models Webinar

    Pricing Models for MT Post-Editing Workshop

    by Memsource

    · February 3

    Hear a panel of innovative localization professionals share different approaches for MT post-editing pricing.

    More info FREE

Featured Companies

See all
Text United

Text United

Memsource

Memsource

Wordbank

Wordbank

Protranslating

Protranslating

Seprotec

Seprotec

Versacom

Versacom

SDL

SDL

Smartling

Smartling

Lingotek

Lingotek

XTM International

XTM International

Smartcat

Smartcat

Translators without Borders

Translators without Borders

STAR Group

STAR Group

memoQ Translation Technologies

memoQ Translation Technologies

Advertisement

Popular articles

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

Why Netflix Shut Down Its Translation Portal Hermes

by Esther Bond

The Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index

The Slator 2020 Language Service Provider Index

by Slator

Top Language Industry Quotes of 2020

Top Language Industry Quotes of 2020

by Monica Jamieson

SlatorPod: The Weekly Language Industry Podcast

connect with us

footer logo

Slator makes business sense of the language services and technology market.

Our Company

  • Support
  • About us
  • Terms & Conditions
  • Privacy Policy

Subscribe to the Slator Weekly

Language Industry Intelligence
In Your Inbox. Every Friday

© 2021 Slator. All rights reserved.

Sign up to the Slator Weekly

Join over 13,000 subscribers and get the latest language industry intelligence every Friday

Your information will never be shared with third parties. No Spam.