Edinburgh translation software firm to grow team and push into Europe after securing funding

An Edinburgh-based producer of automated translation software has secured seed funding to grow its team and expand its offering into Europe.

Dialexy’s software enables the automated translation and certification of key documents for international migrants applying for a visa to work or study. It gives users the ability to deliver these to the relevant authorities in a faster and more cost-effective manner, simplifying an often complex process, the firm said. The company has raised the funding from Apollo Informal Investment.

Dialexy was established in 2013 and after spending some six years in developing its software launched in the UK in 2018 and has now delivered its service to more than 7,000 customers. The global certified translation market is worth in excess of £1 billion per year and over 2022-23 the capital firm is planning to release its software within Europe.

The business is the brainchild of husband and wife team, Blaise Potard and Monica Camino Moreno. Having both migrated to work in the UK, where they subsequently met and married, Potard (who has a PhD in computer science) and Moreno (a certified translator), experienced first hand the difficulties in gaining certified translations of their legal documents.

The business is the brainchild of husband and wife team, Blaise Potard and Monica Camino Moreno.

Chief executive Moreno said: “A requirement for me to move to the UK was that my qualifications were not only translated from Spanish to English but that they were certified as true and accurate. The process for doing this involved a lengthy manual process working with traditional translation agencies who were often not set up to deal with this kind of request. Meeting Blaise and learning of the potential of artificial intelligence made me think about the potential of introducing machine learning into this space.”

The company is now recruiting an additional five members of staff over the next few months to add to its team of seven.

Potard said: “The funding from Apollo will allow us to further develop our solution into the European market with an eye to looking at a roll-out to the Middle East and Asia in the future. Dialexy’s solution is built around the key principles of being simple to use, cost effective and fast so that anyone needing certified translation of their documents can have the peace of mind that this is not going to be another hurdle to overcome when moving across borders. We are continually training our software to become more efficient and accurate through its internal learning process and have taught it to recognise tens of thousands of different documents. However, we also incorporate a human checking element on each document to ensure further accuracy.”

Michiel Smith, director of Apollo Informal Investment, said: “Apollo is very excited with their latest investment, Dialexy. We are very impressed with the company and its management team. Dialexy is the seventh investment by Apollo in a company with a female founder. Apollo doesn’t have a formal diversity policy but it is nice to see we are getting close to 50 per cent of our portfolio being female led. In Scotland there is no shortage of well led female starts-ups but there are still plenty of obstacles that should not be there.”