• Iconic has been awarded the Licence2Market Award for commercial impact of technology licensed through public sector partnership
• R&D carried out with DCU allowed Iconic to “domain adapt” its machine translation software for multiple industries

Dublin, Ireland – April 30, 2018 – Iconic Translation Machines (Iconic), a leading Irish translation software company, has been awarded the Knowledge Transfer Ireland (KTI) 2018 Impact Award in the Licence2Market category. The KTI Awards recognise successes in knowledge transfer carried out in Irish publicly funded research organisations. Iconic were jointly nominated with Dublin City University (DCU) in the Licence2Market Impact Award based on the market success of Iconic’s leading-edge translation software incorporating underlying machine learning (domain adaptation) technology licensed from DCU.

The awards ceremony was held in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, in Dublin, Thursday, 26th April. The awards were presented on the night by John Halligan TD, Minister of State for Training, Skills, Innovation, Research and Development. Congratulating the awardees, Minister Halligan said:

“My Department, through Knowledge Transfer Ireland, has taken a pro-active approach to encouraging and supporting innovation from the research base in Ireland. We have a clear national research commercialisation policy and the tools to enable it including the national IP Protocol, the Technology Transfer Strengthening Initiative and the establishment of KTI. The results from our knowledge transfer system are encouraging and these awards showcase just some of the recent successes.”

The KTI awards, across six categories, recognise top performance in industry engagement and commercialisation of research and they pay tribute to the business and research performing organisations involved in knowledge transfer in Ireland. The Licence2Market award is in respect of a product or service that is active on the market or delivering customer benefit and value to the licensee.

Founded as a spin-out company from DCU, Iconic built upon a decade’s worth of leading research and development into Machine Translation (MT) and Language Technology from the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Centre for Next Generation Localisation (now ADAPT Centre). From this research, Iconic developed its flagship product for the patent and legal translation industry, IPTranslator, which delivers high-quality Machine Translation adapted specifically for this domain based on scientific expertise and deep domain knowledge. The underlying Machine Learning technology licensed from DCU underpins the domain adaptation techniques used by Iconic and is core to Iconic’s proprietary Ensemble Architecture for Neural Machine Translation.

In 2017, Iconic leveraged this architecture to develop and launch new MT solutions for e-discovery. These solutions can be accessed through managed services, using a web application, or through streamlined integrations directly within the e-discovery workflow. Iconic’s legal translation solutions allow for translating foreign language electronically stored information (ESI) quickly, securely, and effectively in more than 50 languages.

“We’re delighted to have won the KTI Licence2Market award.” said Dr. John Tinsley, CEO of Iconic. “Not only is it a proud moment to have our hard work validated externally, it’s also an acknowledgement of the fantastic work carried out by our team behind the scenes on the daily basis.”

Dr Alison Campbell, Director of Knowledge Transfer Ireland, also congratulated the six awardees: “The Impact Awards are an important event in Ireland’s research and innovation calendar, recognising knowledge transfer successes and the people who make them happen. They are also an opportunity for us to demonstrate the wider impact of knowledge transfer. The projects celebrated at the awards are addressing societal challenges, as well as creating economic value.”

About Iconic Translation Machines
Iconic Translation Machines is a leading machine translation software and services provider who specialise in custom solutions for the legal industry. Iconic is the partner of choice for some of the world’s largest law firms, information providers, and government organizations, helping them to translate more data, more accurately, and in less time to achieve strategic advantage while ensuring costs and risks are minimised. With seamless integration, instant translation, automatic language identification and data center locations worldwide, Iconic’s e-discovery solutions translate vast amounts of foreign language ESI quickly, securely and effectively. Iconic is based in Dublin, Ireland. www.iconictranslation.com

About Knowledge Transfer Ireland
Knowledge Transfer Ireland is the national office that helps businesses to benefit from access to Irish expertise and technology by making it simple to connect and engage with the research base in Ireland. Knowledge Transfer Ireland enables companies to innovate their business by signposting to novel technology and research expertise in Ireland and by providing best practice guidance to simplify the process of accessing this rich source of opportunity.

For further enquiries please contact Dana Sheridan at info(at)iconictranslation.com