Straker goes to Hollywood

The Auckland-based, ASX-listed Straker Translations says it landed a $1 million deal with a major US TV production studio — which it’s billing as the first of its type.

Co-founder and chief executive Grant Straker won’t name the new customer but says his company’s services will be used for adding subtitles (and via partner, dubbing) for multiple TV series produced by the studio for the Latin American market.

Straker Translations uses artificial intelligence and machine learning for creating an automated first draft of a translation — in the same manner as rivals like Google Translate.

But unlike the freebies, it uses a real-life humans (crowdsourced from an army of 13,000 freelancers) to finesse each draft into a polished translation.

Straker says the deal was won by a new team in the Los Angeles suburb of Burbank, neighbouring Hollywood, where major studios are clustered, which was set up explicitly to pursue such deals.

The team has a “good pipeline”,

Straker says.

“The media market is the fastestgrowing segment of the translation industry and due to its rapid growth, it is hard to estimate but we believe this is a $5b market opportunity” .

In May, the company reported revenue, fuelled by a series of acquisitions, was up 44 per cent to $24.6 million or 4.7 per cent ahead of its prospectus guidance.

It made a $4.5m net loss, versus a $1.6m loss in the prior year. Its loss before acquisition and IPO costs was $790,000, a 60 per cent improvement.