Marco Trombetti was named one of Italy’s newest Cavalieri del Lavoro just days before joining the Italy Now podcast to explain how he built one of the country’s most quietly influential technology companies.
In 1999, while still chasing questions in astrophysics in France, Trombetti and his wife Isabelle Andrieu founded Translated, betting that internet translation was worth building at a time when almost no one else did. The company now supports 237 languages, works with more than 700,000 translators worldwide, and counts Google, Airbnb and Uber among its clients.
Keeping people at the centre
Trombetti refuses to pick a side in the AI-versus-human translation debate. Rather than racing to replace translators the way some larger rivals have, Translated built a system in which machines learn continuously from human corrections, freeing people to focus on the parts of the job only they can do.
He believes the company could only have been built in Italy, where language barriers are felt every day rather than only when crossing an ocean. It is, he says, a story about patience, naivety and building a global business without losing sight of the people inside it.
Listen to the full conversation on the Italy Now podcast.
