Sunday, September 5, 2010 15:40 - 0 Comments

Newstin Cracks Language Barriers Online

A European technology startup provides multilingual news experience

Want to know what the Italian press is saying about Tiger Woods? Or how the Chinese media is criticizing Bing? Or even just what the Daily Telegraph is saying about citrus sales in English supermarkets?

Read Newstin. Using its patented software, the site has found a way to translate news from more than 160,000 sources across the globe in ten languages.

Newstin, which started with six staff members in Prague in 1998, was initially funded privately by its CEO and founder, Frank Vrabel, and a group of angel investors – affluent individuals who provide capital for business startups.  The site was originally created to solve IT problems for business clients.

But a fairly simple idea has become a service that gives readers a feast of a global range of news. 

Most websites—even Facebook— are struggling to crack language barriers, limiting one user’s ability to understand another’s half way across the world. But Newstin insists it has broken new ground on creating a global online community. “We are jumping across these differences to lay a foundation to interconnect all the editions,” said Jeremy Lopez, director of business development of the news site who joined in 2006 to start this global news aggregation project.