RWS announced today that it is reviving the Language Weaver brand of machine translation (MT) technology after acquiring Language Weaver’s parent company SDL in 2020. The first iteration of Language Weaver, developed in 2002, garnered an esteemed reputation within the language industry, as it was one of the first brands to commercialize automatic translation technologies utilizing machine learning.
“We’re excited to bring back the much-loved Language Weaver brand,” said Azad Ootam, chief technology officer of RWS. “Many within the industry will remember Language Weaver — a brand synonymous with innovation and pushing the boundaries of language translation.”
SDL retired the Language Weaver brand in 2015 and renamed it SDL Machine Translation. The company continued to invest in the technology behind Language Weaver, developing a neural machine translation-based system (as opposed to the statistical machine translation used in the original version of Language Weaver) that can translate between 2,700 different language combinations.
“By bringing together AI experts and technology from across RWS, SDL, and Iconic, we now have a world-class platform that outperforms traditional MT approaches and renews the original vision of the Language Weaver founders,” Ootam said.
When it was first founded, Language Weaver was lauded for the fact that it made it easier for non-specialists to help build and develop more fine-tuned MT models to better fit their needs as consumers. Language Weaver allows users to provide real-time feedback on translations, which serve to improve the system’s language models and create systems that are more well-equipped for a given consumer’s needs.
The platform features cloud-based technology that allows businesses to process and organize their multilingual content all in one place; it can also be integrated with any software or platform, from Microsoft Office to various chatbot systems. Language Weaver also boasts a wide range of high-profile businesses in its user base, including the U.S. Army, which uses Language Weaver to easily communicate with personnel in the Republic of Korea Army and encourage peace on the Korean Peninsula.
