Fliplingo is translating the world, one tweet at a time

There are 61 languages being used on Twitter these days. Surprisingly, three out of the top ten countries by tweets are in Asia – Thailand, Japan, and Indonesia. Although English is still the dominant language on Twitter, other tongues like Korean, Malay, and Japanese feature prominently. Aware of how important languages are on Twitter, a Thailand-based startup has launched a service called Fliplingo.

Started by Matthieu Aussaguel, a French who now lives in Chiang Mai, Thailand, Fliplingo is a Twitter translation service. It’s like Linqapp or Gengo in that it uses real people to translate the context. But Fliplingo has a team to do that, and so it doesn’t use the crowdsourcing model of Linqapp and Gengo.

Fliplingo offers services in three different ways:

• Automate: Clients can connect their Twitter account to the Fliplingo platform, then the startup will translate and publish the tweets on behalf of the client.
• Post: Fliplingo can translate specific Twitter posts submitted by the client.
• Engage: Similar to ‘post’, once someone tweets an @mention to the client, Fliplingo will create a translated reply on behalf of the client.

Aussaguel previously worked at crowdsourcing marketplace Envato. He started working on the Fliplingo prototype in June 2013 and got positive feedback from potential customers. However, since the system is extremely complex, he couldn’t test it before launch. It’s still running on an invitation-only model to selected brands and users as the startup wants to ensure its translations are top-notch and accurate. Of course, the service is quite heavy on resources, so it’s not easy to scale. Fliplingo got over 400 invitation requests on the first day of its launch.

Aussaguel’s long-term plan for the company is to have the service support other platforms and tools such as Facebook and Dropbox.

(Editing by Steven Millward)