After Attracting SurveyMonkey and Foursquare, Smartling Translation Targets Small Businesses

Kira M. Newman October 12, 2011 Tweet

Smartling, the language translation service for websites and apps that we previously covered, has launched a new service for small businesses today. The New York startup updated its platform with new features, like a style guide and a glossary for translators, and a new interface targeted at small businesses and non-technical staff.

“The meek and humble marketing person or webmaster could use it without being an expert in localization, and that’s what’s exciting,” says Elizabeth Golluscio, Smartling’s VP of marketing.

Companies can use Smartling to generate professional, crowdsourced, or machine translations of their websites. This has attracted customers like SurveyMonkey and Foursquare, as well as $14 million in venture capital.

Since our last coverage, Golluscio says, Smartling has expanded their team and signed on new customers such as Threadless. They also partnered with CloudFlare, a service to make websites faster and more secure, to allow CloudFlare users to add a Smartling app to their sites.

Smartling is similar to Hong Kong startup OneSky; they both sell freemium translation services with affordable packages. But Smartling offers more features, including machine translation for cash-strapped businesses and full SEO optimization in the translated sites. (Developers should look into how this optimization works for foreign-languages search engines besides Google.)

Golluscio hinted at “major client announcements” on the horizon, so look out for Smartling on your favorite webpages.