News you may have missed from the last week
Akorbi Ranked as Largest Woman-Owned LSP in the US
Akorbi, a US-based group of companies specializing in language, technology, and global workforce solutions, has earned rankings that make the company the largest privately owned, woman-owned language service provider (LSP) in the United States. The company is ranked #29 and #35 in the world by CSA Research and Nimdzi Insights, respectively. Akorbi has ranked #11 on CSA Research’s North American list. As a top-ranked member of the multibillion-dollar global language services industry, Akorbi is one of only a few women-owned LSPs operating successfully in the global market.
Polyglotte releases new free app
Polyglotte Inc. has released a new free app for iPad, which first launched in 2016. The Polyglotte app involves a patented multilingual keyboard that makes it easy for users to type in several languages with the same keyboard layout. The app got an update and a makeover just in time for the pandemic — bored children can type upside-down. Others can enjoy multilingual typing, legal, math and finance symbols. An earlier version, polyKB One, supported the iPhone as well, but has been discontinued. Supporting the iPhone in the future will require some bug fixes and a UX redesign. The Polyglotte app for iPad works exactly like Polyglotte ES, and serves as a great demo for those interested in clacking away on multilingual mechanical keyboards.
Straker publishes annual meeting results
The annual meeting results outline resolutions from the Straker meeting, including the election of Director Amanda Cribb and the re-election of Director Paul Wilson, along with several amendments to company terms and an alteration of the company constitution.
Appen releases AI Readiness Assessment tool
Designed to level-set companies pursuing AI, Appen’s assessment aims to provide practical guidance on how to effectively leverage AI. The announcement follows the 2020 State of AI and Machine Learning report, in which 82% of respondents reported utilizing AI in their business.
Keywords Studios PLC announces the acquisition of Maverick Media Limited
Keywords Studios, the international technical and creative services provider to the global video games industry, announced the acquisition of Maverick, a video games creative marketing agency, for £3.6m. The acquisition progresses the group’s goal to become the premier technical and creative services platform for the global video games industry.
Microsoft Translator adds two Kurdish dialects for text translation
Northern and Central Kurdish dialects will now be available on the Microsoft Translator app, Office, and Translator for Bing. Users can also use Azure Cognitive Services Speech to add Northern and Central Kurdish to more than 70 other languages. Northern Kurdish, also known as Kurmanji, is spoken in Turkey, Syria, northern Iraq, and northwest and northeast Iran by 15-17 million Kurds. Central Kurdish, known as Sorani, is spoken in Iraqi Kurdistan and western Iran by 9-12 million Kurds. The two languages make up about 75% of all Kurdish speakers.
Google Translate now lets users save transcripts of real-time speech transcriptions
The Google Translate App acquired a new feature in March that allowed users to transcribe and translate speech in near real-time. Google is now rolling out an update to the feature that will allow users to save transcriptions for later reference. Google Translate’s transcription feature currently supports nine languages: English, French, German, Hindi, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, and Italian.
China sees 210,000 new AI-related enterprises
Growing by over 45% this year, the number of AI-related enterprises has skyrocketed as entrepreneurs flock to the industry, according to Xinhua News Agency. Nearly 950,000 companies in China have developed in the areas of AI, data processing, cloud computing, voice and image recognition, and natural language processing.
