It’s not quite the instant translating, ear canal-dwelling, Babel Fish from Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but Toronto’s Ortsbo Inc. might be the closest online equivalent.
Ortsbo — which takes its name from the Swedish word for ‘local’ — builds online translation software that integrates with all major online chatting platforms — including Facebook, Twitter, MSN Messenger, Google Talk and even ICQ — and provides real-time translation in more than 50 languages, making international conversations seem local.
“English has been the dominant language of the Internet, but that is changing,” said David Lucatch, chief executive of Intertainment Media Inc., the publicly-traded parent company of Ortsbo.
“We felt it was time to embrace that opportunity and we think we have a solution that provides a platform for any language anytime, anywhere.”
While English is still the most commonly used language online – accounting for about 1 in 4 Internet users globally — Mr. Lucatch points out that the gap with other languages is narrowing. As a growing number of regions around the world gain access to the Internet, a wider array of mother tongues are moving online.
There were 2,500% more Arabic-speaking Internet users in 2010 than there were in 2000, and 1,800% more Russian-speaking users, according to Internet World Stats. Chinese-language users accounted for 22.6% of all Internet users in 2010, an increase of more than 1,200% since 2000.
More languages used online means more people will need services such as Ortsbo to break down language barriers to ensure the Internet remains an open forum where anyone can communicate instantly with anyone else, language notwithstanding, Mr. Lucatch said.
Having only launched Ortsbo last July, Mr. Lucatch has seen usage go “off the charts.”
“We’re up to 8.6-million active monthly users,” he said. “We’re at the end of month nine as of March 22 and we’re at where Facebook was at month 29.”
(Though in fairness, Facebook’s initial growth was limited because the site was initially only available to users with valid University email accounts)
Ortsbo isn’t confining itself to just instant messaging either. The company is already accepting registrations for the Beta version of an email plugin for Microsoft Corp.’s Outlook software which it calls O4O (Ortsbo for Outlook) and plans to launch very soon.
Although the current Ortsbo service is free, the Outlook plugin costs $29.99. Orsbo is also planning to launch mobile applications and an SMS translation platform by mid-summer.
There are even plans to deal with the literal translation issue, where colloquial phrases such as ‘needle in a haystack’ or ‘knock on wood’ have long plagued automatic translation platforms. By launching an Ortsbo wiki, Mr. Lucatch is hopeful the service’s own users will help to make such translations more accurate.
“The first phase of this was just to look at social media integration, but our next phases that we’re bringing out will go way beyond that spectrum,” he said.
Investors have already taken notice of Ortsbo’s value. Intertainment Media’s stock on the TSX Venture Exchange has grown in value by nearly 400% since late January, from about 10 cents per share to 50 cents when markets opened on Wednesday.
“If you look at all the trading we’ve done in the last couple months, hundreds of millions of shares for a junior tech stock, we’ve had both liquidity and volume,” said Mr. Lucatch.
“This has been a real big success for us.”
So far, Intertainment Media has already received two offers to purchase Ortsbo: a $30-million offer last September and then another in February for an undisclosed amount described by Mr. Lucatch as “significantly higher.” Mr. Lucatch declined to say which companies tendered the offers.
In both cases, the offers were rejected.
“We’ve only launched one of several of our product groups within Ortsbo and in fairness, we didn’t want to put that value into someone else’s hands,” Mr. Lucatch said.
“Ortsbo is making language sexy again.”
jberkow@nationalpost.com