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mromaine

259 karma · joined September 9, 2009

Born in Boston to an American father and Japanese mother. Lived in the North East U.S., Tokyo, and London before finally settling in Tokyo from ages 6 to 14. Attended Phillips Academy, graduated from Brown University, and received a Masters in music from Stanford University before returning to Tokyo in 2002 to join Sony. Started in R&D studying multi-channel audio streaming applications, moved to consumer product development, and then joined the Corporate Technology Strategy Group when Howard Stringer was appointed CEO. In 2007 I founded Majides, Inc. - a Web-Services development company and unification brand for incubation projects MiiStation, KiraKiraJin, and 2kurabe. MiiStation was reviewed in the WallStreet Journal and awarded a Time.com Best 50 Website in 2007. Currently developing Gengo (http://gengo.com), the most efficient human-powered translation platform with an API on the web.
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mromaine··on Poll: HN readers, where's your residence?
Japan - only the 3rd largest economy in the world, gets grouped with "(Rest of) Asia/Pacific", while India, Africa, UK and Canada get their own spots ...? :)
mromaine··on Human Based Translation API
Hi - are you sure about not receiving a reply? I'm looking at the Zendesk ticket and it shows that we've responded within 8 hours. Update: Now I see why - you mistyped your email address.
mromaine··on Why should anyone ever use a Google API again?
Full disclosure: I'm the CTO of myGengo

I would also add that because translation is core to our business, we would never deprecate the translation API :)

mromaine··on Web Services Our Startup Relies On Every Day
two words - "opportunity cost".
mromaine··on Kickstartup: Successful fundraising with Kickstarter
this has got to be one of the most beautifully set blog posts I've read recently.
mromaine··on Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months
(full disclaimer - I work at myGengo) myGengo (http://mygengo.com) tests translators and does quality-checking for multiple levels to ensure customers are happy with the output. We also allow customers to rate translators and - I'm trying to be honest here - we're almost embarrassed to show the feedback comments because they sound too good (http://mygengo.com/talk/customers/testimonials).

Customers also have the option to request changes / corrections, and even to reject if they are not fully satisfied.

Anyways, just an alternative solution. The online-translation market gets interesting by the day :)

mromaine··on Tell HN: I made a freelance translation site in only 5 months
Funny - why do you expose all emails on your site?
mromaine··on How I reduced translation costs of 200 articles from $9000 to $46
If you're dissatisfied by machine translation, you might consider myGengo - http://mygengo.com - billed as "Mechanical Turk for Translations" - http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/01/11/mygengo-is-mechanical-t... (disclaimer: I'm a co-founder).

Many translation services don't qualify their translators, often accepting them after a CV submission. At myGengo we qualify them through tests, and maintain quality control through regular spot-checks. We're based in Tokyo atm, so we're pretty good at Asian ⇄ European language pairs. You can check out an unsolicited 3rd-party review by a translator here: http://drane.it/2010/01/mygengo-fills-a-niche-and-does-what-...