Trint, the AI-powered translation service, closes $4.5M Series A

From techcrunch.com

Trint, the London-based translation startup co-founded by Emmy-winning journalist Jeff Kofman, has raised $4.5 million in Series A funding.

The round includes follow-on investment from Horizons Lab, the Hong Kong-based seed fund operated by the managers of Horizons Ventures, with participation from TechNexus, and The Associated Press.

It brings total funding for Trint  to $7.8 million since the company’s founding in December 2014. Original backers include Google Digital News Innovation Fund and the Knight Enterprise Fund.

Counting some of the world’s largest media organizations as customers — including The Associated Press, Vice News, The Washington Post, and Der Spiegel — Trint uses machine learning and speech-to-text technology to automate transcribing, which is a significant pain-point for journalists and other content producers, such as video makers.

The web-based software also combines an audio/video player and text editor, with the outputted transcription synced to the audio player’s playhead. This then makes it easy to manually correct any mistranslations, which, in turn, helps Trint get smarter. There’s an iPhone app too, for mobile translation of phone calls and recordings.

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