Unbabel lands $1.5M for artificial intelligence-based language translation with a touch of human

Unbabel, startup that offers a translation app that combines artificial intelligence and crowdsourced reviewers, has announced the raising of $1.5 million in Seed funding. Investors include Jared Fliesler of Matrix Partners, Kevin Rose of Google Ventures, Elad Gil, Raymond Tonsing of Caffeinated Capital, Roger Dickey, Young Guo of IDG Partners, zPark Ventures, Stephan Morais of Caixa Capital, Shilling Capital Partners, Digital Garage, FundersClub and WeFunder. The Y Combinator-backed company offers its service via API, email, or online form, and runs text through machine translation, with the result reviewed and refined by two human editors.

The company, which is headquartered in San Francisco with an office in Lisbon, Portugal, was founded last summer by Vasco Calais Pedro, and was a part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2014 batch.