Announcing Unbabel.org at Techfugees Portugal

We were really pleased to open up our doors and host the first meetup of Techfugees Portugal, a chapter of the global Techfugees social enterprise which coordinates the international tech community’s response to the needs of refugees.

Like many of you reading this now, we’ve been paying close attention to the many unfolding humanitarian crises in recent years. As a company, we’ve been wondering how we could contribute beyond our personal donations of time and money.

Even more so when we have a strong feeling that the same tech we sell to companies to remove language barriers between them and their customers, could well solve some of the very real problems for the millions of people who have had to flee their homes and be displaced to countries where they may not speak the local language.

Inspired by the great work being done by organisations like Translators Without Borders, and realising that our paid human editors had previously impeded us from deploying our Translation API in a similar fashion, we decided the time had come to roll up our sleeves and create something new.

Since the end of 2016, we’ve been working to launch Unbabel.org, a non-profit organisation that will use Unbabel Inc.’s machine-learning-plus-community technology to remove language barriers where they produce the most friction.

It is our sincere hope that it may help to alleviate some of the effects of forced mass migration and other humanitarian crises happening around the world.

Here’s co-founder and CEO Vasco Pedro making the announcement:

We are now in the process of signing up NGOs and charity organisations who feel the need for the fast, human-quality translations that Unbabel.org will provide. If you are from one, or know one, please do get in touch. We’ll have more news in the months ahead.

As for Techfugees Portugal, the next meetup will be in Coimbra on 16 February, with a big hackathon planned in Lisbon for June 2017. We’ll be there. Will you?

Source: https://unbabel.com/blog/unbabel-techfugees-portugal/