Bloomsburg's RantNetwork continues to grow, even as it makes the world smaller by obliterating language barriers.
A recent Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania Innovation Award winner, RantNetwork now offers its translation app in Blackberry, Android, iPhone and iPad versions. Its “Communilator” app instantly translates texts, photos of print (signs, books, newspapers, menus, etc.), voice, email and SMS messages in more than 3,000 language combinations. RantNetwork's servers run the complex algorithms that match up word meanings, syntax and grammar.
President Ken Volet says that RantNetwork continues to develop new features and functions and expand the number of platforms that run its app. A mobile web version that can run on any smart phone is being developed; so is live, simultaneous translation.
The company has also launched a full Arabic interface through Etihad-Etisalat (Mobily), the second largest telecom carrier in Saudi Arabia, expanding RantNetwork's market to the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. The Arabic interface is an important development, says Volet; up until now, all of RantNetwork's user instructions were in English. User interfaces in Japanese, Chinese, Russian and Korean are now in the planning stages, he adds.
The late Bill Grandizio and his wife, Elisa, founded RantNetwork in 2007. Today, RantNetwork employs four. Job growth, Volet explains, comes at Optimo-IT, also in Bloomsburg, the firm's software development partner, “as we develop new versions and increase distribution of our products.”
Communilator works in 54 languages, spanning the lexicon from Afrikaans to Yiddish. As for Volet himself, he chuckles, “I just speak English.”
Source: Ken Volet, RantNetwork
Writer: Elise Vider
