Safaba Closes Funding Round To Develop Enterprise Machine Translation

PITTSBURGH, Aug. 23, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Safaba Translation Solutions LLC ("Safaba"), a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company, has announced the closing of a first-ever private equity financing round.  The financing round was led by Newlin Investment Company with additional funding from Innovation Works (IW), a leading investor in seed- and early-stage technology companies. 

The financing will be used to further develop Safaba's Enterprise Machine Translation technology that allows leading global enterprises to automate translation of their digital content, which includes websites, marketing materials, software products, technical documentation and customer engagement communications.  Safaba's technology accurately adapts to each company's unique language, terminology and vocabulary preferences, styling guidelines and formatting rules. This innovative approach allows global enterprises to reduce the hours associated with manual editing and translation of content.  Subsequent enhancements to productivity help companies localize their communications to global markets faster and more cost-effectively.  A key Safaba advantage is the ability to introduce real-time multilingual communication channels to global customers and business partners.

"Enterprise Machine Translation (EMT) is an important part of companies' globalization strategy and can have a direct impact on an organization's ability to realize global growth potential, increase profitability and reduce operational costs," said Alon Lavie, Chief Executive Officer at Safaba. "It enables greater brand awareness by dramatically increasing availability and visibility of a company's marketing message in global markets, accelerates product readiness by reducing time-consuming translation cycles and allows companies to provide better and more efficient customer care using both assisted and non-assisted online channels."

"Safaba's ongoing focus on Advanced Adaptation Technologies allows us to deliver solutions that produce greater language accuracy and fluency for a wide range of applications.  Our proprietary technologies enable individual adaptation to each client company's unique brand language across all online channels and digital media. This round of funding will provide us with the financial resources to accelerate our software development with additional innovations that would, no doubt, deliver even greater value to our customers," he added.

"The potential for Safaba is immense," said Bill Newlin, Chairman of Newlin Investment Company. "Safaba was founded in order to solve a problem for global corporate communications and has done so with great success. Safaba benefits from a clear technological advantage resulting from assembling a rare team of domain experts and a management team that is leading the company in the right direction."

About Safaba
Safaba Translation Solutions provides Enterprise Machine Translation (EMT) solutions to the world's leading global enterprises. It delivers velocity in brand collateral localization and enables multi-lingual communications in real-time customer interactions. By focusing on Machine Translation and Natural Language Processing innovation, Safaba is helping its customers enrich their global customers' experience and boost local and global brand value. For more information: www.safaba.com 

About Newlin Investment Company  
Newlin Investment Company, based in Pittsburgh, is a long-term investor in start-up and emerging companies.  The firm invests both financial and advisory resources in its portfolio companies.  Newlin Investment works in partnership with management to collaborate on strategic planning and effective organizational building, which includes the management, financial and operational segments of the business.  

SOURCE Safaba