Found in Translation
Monolinguists wanting to communicate with the global masses have never had it so easy. Trusty old Google Translate can convert the content of images, audio, and entire websites across hundreds of languages, while newer tools such as ChatGPT also serve as handy pocket translators.
On the back end, DeepL and ElevenLabs have reached lofty billion-dollar valuations for various language-related smarts that businesses can funnel into their own applications. But a new player is now entering the fray, with an AI-powered localization engine that serves the infrastructure to help developers go global — a “Stripe” for app localization, if you will.
Going Global
Formerly known as Replexica, Lingo.dev targets developers who want to make their app’s front end fully localized from the get-go; all they need to worry about is shipping their code as usual, with Lingo.dev bubbling away under the hood on autopilot. The upshot is that there is no copy/pasting text between ChatGPT (for quick and dirty translations), or messing around with multiple translation files in different formats sourced from myriad agencies.
Founding Team
Today, Lingo.dev counts customers such as French unicorn Mistral AI and open source Calendly rival Cal.com. To drive the next phase of growth, the company has announced it has raised $4.2 million in a seed round of funding led by Initialized Capital, with participation from Y Combinator and a slew of angels.
Building a Brand Voice
Lingo.dev is the handiwork of CEO Max Prilutskiy and CPO Veronica Prilutskaya (pictured above) who announced that they sold a previous SaaS startup called Notionlytics to an undisclosed buyer last year. The duo had already been working on the foundations of Lingo.dev since 2023, with the first prototype developed as part of a hackathon at Cornell University. This led to their first paying customers, before going on to join Y Combinator’s fall program last year.
The Technology
At its core, Lingo-dev is a Translation API that can either be called locally by developers through their CLI (command line interface), or through a direct integration with their CI/CD system via GitHub or GitLab. So in essence, development teams receive pull requests with automated translation updates whenever a standard code change is made.
Data Privacy
At the heart of all this, as you might expect, is a large language model (LLM) — or several LLMs, to be exact, with Lingo.dev orchestrating the various input and outputs between them all. This mix-and-match approach, which combines models from Anthropic, OpenAI, among other providers, is designed to ensure that the best model is chosen for the task at hand.
Going Local
It’s still fairly early days for Lingo.dev in terms of its path to full localization. For example, colors and symbols may have different meanings between different cultures, something that Lingo.dev doesn’t directly cater to. Moreover, things like metric/imperial conversions is something that still needs to be addressed by the developer at the code level.
Conclusion
The goal of Lingo.dev is to eliminate friction from localization so thoroughly that it becomes an infrastructure layer and natural part of the tech stack. The company is working on various features to achieve this, including context awareness, idioms, and applied AI research to improve the automated localization process.
FAQs
Q: What is Lingo.dev?
A: Lingo.dev is an AI-powered localization engine that helps developers go global by automating the translation process.
Q: How does Lingo.dev work?
A: Lingo.dev uses a combination of large language models to translate text, images, and audio across hundreds of languages.
Q: What are the benefits of using Lingo.dev?
A: Lingo.dev eliminates friction from localization, making it easier for developers to reach global audiences.
Q: What is the future of Lingo.dev?
A: Lingo.dev is continually working on improving its technology, with a focus on preserving feminine/masculine versions of nouns and verbs, and applied AI research to improve the automated localization process.
