San Francisco- and Portugal-based Unbabel has completed its second acquisition of 2023 so far, buying website localization technology platform Bablic in early June. The terms of the deal are undisclosed.
Bablic was founded in Israel in 2014 and offers a three-tiered SaaS website translation solution along with a range of integrations (e.g., Shopify and WordPress) and APIs.
Founded in 2013, Unbabel was initially focused on the high-volume customer service translation domain. The AI agency has raised upwards of USD 90m to date and has gone on to become one of the success stories from the wave of language industry startups of its era.
More recently, the company added comprehensive service operations to its language technology offering by acquiring language service providers (LSPs) Lingo24, in December 2021, and EVS, in January 2023.
Unlike these two previous acquisitions, Bablic is a pure technology play for Unbabel, adding complementary tech and opening up new delivery channels across website and marketing content.
Slator 2022 Language Industry M&A and Funding Report
Supporting the Buyer Journey and CX
Unbabel’s Chief Product Officer, Alex Cobb, told Slator that Bablic will enable Unbabel to “offer improved website translation and localization capabilities that will serve to support the sales process and buyer journey from start to finish with costs and time saved — impacting nearly every aspect of CX [customer experience].”
He added, “This expansion will enhance Unbabel’s existing marketing solution that supports the buyer’s journey from awareness to acquisition,” through the translation of content including web pages, press releases, and emails.
Cobb described website localization as “key for businesses” and noted that “localization can increase search traffic by 47%, boost website visits by 70%, and increase conversion rates by 20%, contributing to increased sales alongside improved customer acquisition.”
As part of Unbabel’s “hands-off website localization” solution, customers will also be able to use Unbabel’s quality estimation (QE) capabilities to identify translation errors in website translation.
Unbabel’s CEO, Vasco Pedro, discussed the topic of QE in a January 2023 interview with Slator, explaining, “With this new technology, users can pick the best pipelines either by using different MT or with humans.”
Cobb confirmed that Unbabel plans to retain employees from both businesses, while Bablic’s CEO, Gabriele Manasse, and its CTO will stay on throughout the integration process.
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