Business is an international language. But sometimes things can get lost in translation. Finding fast, professional translators can be a major issue for some companies. Being able to effectively communicate with clients and fellow business owners from all over the world is important. Ofer Shoshan, CEO of One Hour Translation, makes finding fast translations easier than ever.
Tell us about your background and your business
Yaron Kaufman (CMO), Lior Libman (COO), Oren Yagev (CTO) and I founded One Hour Translation in 2009.
Over 5 years later, One Hour Translation is the world’s largest online translation agency. We provide high-quality professional human translation to thousands of business customers worldwide. We professionally translate 75 languages and 3000 language combinations, thanks to a community of over 15000 professional translators from over 100 different countries. We specialize in several fields of translation including legal, technical, financial, web-sites, mobile applications, marketing material and more.
In essence, One Hour Translation moved traditional professional translation to the Internet. We created a unique localization management platform that enables customers to get high-quality human translation, 24/7/365 in a very efficient and affordable way.
Before One Hour Translation, I was the founder and CEO of Qlusters, a leading open source system management solution provider; The founder and CEO of Coretech, a company that developed a life-saving cardiological device, and was also the VP Business Development at RichFX, an Internet technology company.
Why did you start your business?
Yaron, our co-founder and CMO, had a financial blog he wanted to translate quickly and efficiently. When he could not find a proper solution online, the idea for One Hour Translation was born. As it turns out, the translation market was one of the last huge markets that hadn’t yet moved online. We realized we shared a common need with many other businesses – that is to get high-quality yet cost effective business translations, on time and in an accessible manner.
Why is the DMV (D.C., Maryland & Virginia) a good place to be an entrepreneur?
There’s a budding startup community in DC with access to very smart people. Not only is DC a great place to network and build business relationships with many enterprise clients in the localization and translation industry, it also boasts a diverse, vibrant and supportive community of professionals from all over the globe. With so many internationally focused organizations and plenty of business opportunities, the DMV region was a natural place to establish the headquarters for our enterprise subsidiary – OHT Enterprise- which streamlines large businesses multi-language translation needs without the need for in-house translation teams.
What do you see is the future of your business and your industry as a whole?
Communication and marketing in a local language is a key step towards developing deeper business relationships and winning the hearts and minds of target markets – and of course increasing revenue. With statistics such as 72.4% of global consumers that prefer to use their native language when shopping online (Source: Common Sense Advisory) and 80% of the countries within the Top 5 for downloads and revenue in Google Play being non-English speaking countries from Europe and East Asia (Source: App Annie), I think that the demand for professional translation and localization is on a definite upward trajectory. I’m happy about our enterprise prospects and look forward to meeting and working with new enterprise clients.