Crowdsourced website translator Easyling wins How to Web startup competition in Romania

At How to Web today I got to be invited to judge its startup competition. One of the judges was nowhere to be found and I was considered a suitable replacement. My rookie level of judging experience has not skewed the results dramatically, as the judges were in sync about the winner.

And the winner is Easyling, the crowdsourced website translation service. Easyling helps website owners get websites translated by the professional agencies, minimizing the situations where the translation is put out of context. It achieves that by displaying translation word by word as it would actually appear on the website, eliminating the need to take text off the website and subsequently upload the translation back into the content management system.

Submitting website for translation is achieved by a click of a button. Website owners can also bring their own translators to use the platform, whilst the translating agencies can simplify their work process with it. Depending on the size of the translating crowd, it can be done within a record time.

Crowd-building is a work in process for Hungarian Easyling founders Peter Farago and Balázs Benedek who have already gathered a crowd of 18 000 transcription and telemarketing agents for their other company Skawa which has become the largest call center in Hungary. Farago and Benedek get tickets and a startup booth at The Next Web conference in April 2012 as well as Adobe Business Catalyst service. One of the three finalists will also get a place at one of the next mini Seedcamp events.

The runners up included Bulgarian Fonii and Romanian Socialook, as well as mobile markup language and platform developer Appscend ( the latter did not make it into the top three).

Fonii analyzes mobile phone bills online and offers its customers cheaper tariffs focusing on cost of international calls, roaming and mobile data. I am not sure if I would personally analyze my mobile bill “to death”, but apparently such service is very popular in the US and has analog in Ireland.

Romanian Socialook helps sales people to reach prospective customers, and entrepreneurs get to potential investors. It leverages social media feed, as well as databases such as Crunchbase and UK Company House. A similar tool LinkFindr is used a lot to synchronize connections via various social networks, but also offers insight based on social interaction and introductions to the relevant people.

Last night I have found myself at a party surrounded by the accelerator people (representatives from Springboard, Seedcamp, Rockstart, GammaRebels, HackFwd, Startup Bootcamp have all made their appearance). Not surprisingly, the conference is closing with a debate whether or not there are too many incubators. Fair question. I wonder if any of the panel participants will agree.

With that, goodbye Bucharest, which I will remember for the eclectic architectural style and insane driving manners and hello Le Web, December 7th to 9th in Paris.

Imagre credit: Marina Filipovic Marinshe