DUBAI--With the Middle East's 360 million Arabic speakers reshaping their region this year, a new online translation and editing service is helping international companies break language barriers and tap this key market--while creating hundreds of jobs in the process.
Qordoba's web-based platform, which officially launched today, already boasts more than 400 pre-screened translators and editors in 30 countries and 15 time zones and international clients in the government and private sectors.
Qordoba's Arabic translation offerings undercut traditional agencies by 30 to 50%, depending on the deadline requirements.
"Today, the drivers of growth come from outside the English-speaking world," said May Habib, Qordoba founder and CEO. "At the same time, the Arab world is under-equipped to bring quality Arabic language content and innovative software to global audiences. We want to make accessing new markets fast as well as affordable."
Qordoba's proprietary automated workflow and language tools accommodate high-volume translation customers (+1 million words / month of human-quality translation) as well as customers seeking to translate websites and software applications.
"Our goal is to shape an online content creation community," said Darine Sabbagh, head of Qordoba's community relations. "We want our writers and editors to feel like they are coming to work when they log in to our platform. This is the best way to deliver the highest quality translations to our customers."
The Qordoba team "gets it," said serial entrepreneur Faysal Sohail, a partner at Silicon Valley-based CMEA Capital and one of Qordoba's angel investors.
"Their online platform is creating a very high quality finished work product that is pleasing their customers as well as their content creators," Sohail said. "This is what is required to build a globally competitive, scalable freelancer-based business."
Habib, a former Lehman Brothers investment banker, believes freelance work for knowledge workers like translators, copywriters and editors will become a permanent feature of developing-world economies.
"Developed economies in recovery are seeing that up to 50% of new jobs being created are in fact freelance jobs," she said. "I think that especially in the Arab world this labour model will be a key driver of job creation over the coming years. Post-Arab Spring, you'll have millions of young people forced to look beyond the government for economic security."
The Qordoba management team is backed by world-leading scientists and angel investors.
Dr. Mona Diab, a scientist at the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University and one of the world's leading computational linguists, is Qordoba's senior adviser for language technologies and sits on the Board of Directors.
Qordoba raised an angel round of financing from current and former partners of Intel Capital, CMEA Capital and the Mubadala Development Company. Angel investors also include the CEO of Aramex, Fadi Ghandour, a key figure in the MENA region's nascent start-up scene.
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About Qordoba
Qordoba is a web-based content creation company which works with a distributed team of leading freelance translators and editors to deliver fast, convenient and high quality translation and editing jobs to clients.
Qordoba's mission is to be the fastest, easiest way for customers to take their content global.
Founded in 2011, Qordoba is based in the UAE with team members in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Amman, Toronto and New York. The core team members are a diverse, high-octane group of young developers, copyeditors, translators and business development professionals.
For more information
Darine Sabbagh
+961 3 465 205
press@qordoba.com
© Press Release 2011
