Dimitris Glezos, Managing Director of the company Transifex, a few days ago announced a $ 2,5 $ million dollar funding agreement from leading international investors, turned into a small revolution in the digital revolution.
As a student at the Department of Computer Engineering at the Polytechnic School of the University of Patras, he made the department's website while working as a developer in the private sector. He then started a Ph.D. at the University of Manchester to apply fuzzy logic to artificial intelligence systems.
At the same time, he was active in the free software community and especially in the Fedora operating system. "At that time it had about 10 million users, 1.000 translators and about 300 programmers - almost all volunteers," Mr. Glezos tells "K". “The collaboration between translators and programmers was particularly problematic. Some did not want to mess with technical issues, while others were unable to manage anything related to language».
This is how Transifex was born, an innovative software that dramatically eases this laborious process and has been enthusiastically received in the free software ranks. In 2009, Mr. Glezos participated in its Summer of Code program Google, where he developed the idea further, abandoned his PhD and founded his company (originally called Indifex) in Patras.
"Among our first clients were Intel and Nokia", says the young businessman - only 32 years old today -. "There was a lot of demand for what we offered." Today, five years later, the company has moved from Patras to Athens and opened an office in Silicon Valley – from where Mr. Glezos spoke to us. It has customers from more than 30 countries, its services are used in 17.000 enterprises with 170.000 users. But what exactly do these services consist of?
To learn, "K" went to Transifex headquarters in New Heraklion, the company's headquarters for research and development. Her office, with the Breaking Bad poster and books like Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point on the shelves, is in a single space with Persado's offices, another promising Greek start-up. "They gave us the privilege, because they did not use it and they liked the idea of the climate that would be created. It has worked great, "says Mr. Glezos. It is yet another example of the co-operation that exists among the newest online businesses in Greece - in direct contrast to the mutual suspicion and unfair competition that characterize most other industries.
Antonis Garnelis, head of development productτος, μας εξηγεί τις θαυματουργές του ιδιότητες. Σύμφωνα με τον δικτυακό τόπο της εταιρείας, το Transifex έχει εξελιχθεί από μεταφραστικό εργαλείο για τον κόσμο του ανοιχτού λογισμικού σε παγκόσμια πλατφόρμα για την «τοπικοποίηση» (localization) προϊόντων λογισμικού. Τι σημαίνει αυτό; «Οτι καθιστά πολύ πιο αποτελεσματική τη διαδικασία μετάφρασης και μειώνει σημαντικά το κόστος για τον πελάτη», εξηγεί ο κ. Γαρνέλης. «Για παράδειγμα, έχουμε εισαγάγει έναν αλγόριθμο, που λέγεται translation memory, which saves all translations that have been made. Thus, when a new translation is needed, which is largely similar to an older one, the algorithm detects the similarity and suggests to the translator to use it, instead of doing the work again from the beginning ".
By word of mouth
The $2,5 million in seed funding Transifex secured was the first in its short history. Until now, it had grown solely by word of mouth, between developers and the free software community. The main investor is New Enterprise Associates, an American venture capital fund with $13 billion invested worldwide. Angel investors also participated in the financing, including Silicon Valley veteran Thanos Triad and George Papadopoulos, founder of the company Atypon. The money will be used to develop Transifex Live, the company's new service, which automatically translates content by inserting a single line of code into a website.
Source: kathimerini.gr
