Lexifone on a Roll With Phone Translation Service Tova Cohen - Reuters
go to original September 10, 2012

TEL AVIV - Israeli group Lexifone, which provides automated voice translation from any phone, expects to more than triple sales annually in its first few years of operation, its CEO said.

The company, which launched its service a few weeks ago, can transmit and translate calls to over 100 countries in 15 languages and dialects.

"With this product we change the way people communicate. It is about people and not technology," said Sagie, an expert in computational linguistics who used to work for IBM Research Labs.

Lexifone is already working with BT Group and Telefonica to offer its service to their customers, and is discussing a pilot with AT&T in Texas. It is also in talks with the United States government and will shortly launch in Mexico.

The firm buys up minutes of phone time from operators so customers using its service are billed only once, by Lexifone.

The service requires an access number that must be dialled but no Internet connection or software installation is needed. Callers say a sentence in their own language and this is translated and transmitted in the language chosen. Callers can also check that the right words were translated.

Sagie's son Itay, vice president of sales, said for a business customer the translation is close to 100 percent accurate. For personal conversations, if someone uses a lot of slang the translation would be less accurate but there is a learning mechanism that improves accuracy over time.

The price including the call ranges from 25-40 cents per minute for those buying $10 worth of prepaid calls and drops to 15-20 cents for monthly packages of $20-$200, Itay Sagie said.

The human interpreter industry is estimated at $14 billion a year, with the cost running about $4 a minute, he said. The global market for outsourced translation technology will reach $33.5 billion in 2012, according to market research firm Common Sense Advisory.

Read more at Reuters

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