#112 Scaling Website Localization with Weglot CEO Augustin Prot

Augustin Prot, Co-founder and CEO of Weglot, joins SlatorPod to talk about the startup’s journey as a no-code website localization technology provider. 

Augustin discusses his not-so-typical professional background in M&A and how he got into the language services and tech industry. He talks us through the transformation of their client segments, from self-service SMBs to large enterprises, and how Weglot aligns its product with these sectors.

The CEO talks about raising EUR 45m with partner Partech Growth to scale product development and expand their 30-person team. He shares how no-code tech has evolved since Weglot was founded, with digitalization and Covid-19 accelerating the trend.

Augustin shares the complexities behind website localization and how they tackle SEO challenges — such as getting Google to recognize the translated version of a website. The pod rounds off with Weglot’s roadmap for 2022, including a new integration with Squarespace and the ability to translate variables from within a platform.

First up, Florian and Esther discuss the language industry news of the week, unpacking Google’s huge new language model with 540 billion parameters.

In the anime-translation world, the English release of the Japanese fantasy manga, Ranking of Kings, was suspended due to “typographical and translation issues.” (Previous SlatorPod guest, Katrina Leonoudakis, analyzed the English translation and tweeted how it was partly copied from a fan-made translation.)

Esther talks about Iyuno-SDI’s strategic investment in UK-based technology provider, Ortana Media Group. (Florian points out how Iyuno-SDI’s German press release was lightly post-edited using, most likely, DeepL.)