2015 in Deal Wins: From Gaming Accounts to Government Contracts

Slator covered nine deal wins in 2015. This selection represents only a fraction of the deal wins and client acquisitions in the language services market. If you scored a major client or landed a big project, get in touch with Slator and we will consider it for publication. We prioritize stories that come with additional information such as the size and scope of the deal win as well as exclusive insights and comments. In the meantime, below are the deal wins that caught our attention in 2015:

In August 2015, dental insurance provider Dentegra rolled out a new translation management platform powered by TransPerfect’s GlobalLink platform. Dentegra hopes to better assist their Chinese- and Spanish-speaking customers with the new platform. Especially since in December 2014 they announced they will be participating in 12 new federal and healthcare marketplace exchanges in addition to the 24 in which they already operated.

In September 2015, CAT tool and translation management platform Memsource scored Sega Networks. The game company subscribed to Memsource’s Enterprise edition, intending to use the platform for “on-going multi-language projects with short turnaround times.” Sega Networks handles multiple titles that would require localization for international releases. Sega Networks’ Lead Localization Planner Tetsuya Honda said Memsource’s workspace and data-sharing, file integrations, real-time task monitoring, and coordination capabilities were valuable for their localization efforts.

In the same month, Toyota announced that they will continue using AA Global Language Services as their official partner for their motoring convention in Turkey. AA Global Language Services provided simultaneous translation and interpreting services in seven languages inside and outside the 2015 conference, and will do the same this 2016.

In terms of government contracts, Language Line Solutions was chosen as the official provider for an initiative from New York’s Long Beach. In accordance with the city’s Language Access Policy launched in 2015 that aims to provide “appropriate translation and interpretation services for Long Beach residents with limited English proficiency,” Long Beach has launched an on-demand translation service. Language Line will be translating Long Beach’s website and mobile app, documents and messaging containing vital information, and other communication channels such as government phone lines and Emergency Notification Systems.

Belgium-based Jonckers, meanwhile, closed a deal with Serbian game developer Nordeus in November 2015. Nordeus is best known for the mobile game Top Eleven 2015, a football manager simulator with 11 million registered app users and 12 million active monthly players globally.

Also in November 2015, we noticed a couple of language technology companies making inroads with language service providers. Mid-sized language service providers are increasingly choosing to outsource instead of develop their own tech solutions. ManpowerGroup and AAC Global, for instance, decided to collaborate with Plunet and XTRF respectively.

German-based translation management solutions provider Plunet announced that the Israeli MGS Language Services has dropped its proprietary translation management system (TMS) in favor of the Plunet BusinessManager. Poland-based translation management platform XTRF, on the other hand, announced a deal with AAC Global, the translation arm of Sanoma Group, a Finnish media conglomerate. XTRF’s CEO Andrzej Nedoma exclusively told Slator that they were “managing all translation projects in AAC Global. At the same time XTRF was integrated with the rest of the technology environment used in AAC.”

Likewise, Swiss-based Supertext shared their roll-out of SDL’s new language cloud in a case study at an SDL partner event in Zurich, also held on November 2015. Company CTO Remy Blaettler said the decision to go with SDL was driven in part because they wanted to bridge the gap between their home grown ERP system and the SDL environment used by its linguists and clients

Finally, Canadian motor vehicle agency ICBC awarded a $4.5M phone interpretation contract to Winnipeg-based CanTalk. CanTalk provide interpretation services to ICBC over the next five years. According to ICBC, the phone interpretation requests they received tripled to over 441,000 requests in 2014.