Applied Language Solutions swoops for Irish firm
NORTH West translation company Applied Language Solutions (ALS) has acquired Dublin-based Traslan Teoranta.
Oldham-based ALS, which was founded by entrepreneur Gavin Wheeldon in 2003, said the deal would bolster its machine, or computer-aided, translation service and give it an established customer base in Ireland. The value of the transaction was not disclosed.
Mr Wheeldon said: “Traslan gives our team of IT developers access to a proprietary engine, which is extremely valuable in terms of our machine translation intellectual property.
“The company has a reputation for being actively involved with cutting-edge EU research and this is something that we are keen to continue with as we integrate Traslan into ALS. This move further cements our commitment to machine translation within our language services provision.”
Professor Andy Way, one of the owners of Traslan, became a consultant to ALS in November and will continue to provide knowledge and support for funding bids for machine translation research.
ALS counts the United Nations, Google, Sony and Nike among its clients. It has 125 staff across 11 offices worldwide. In March it secured £1.4m from the Capital for Enterprise Fund to support its growth plans.
In October it bought Harrogate-based Translate4me as part of a plan to more than double turnover to £20m by 2012.
