Structural analysis was developed in the 1980–1990s
Lingsoft’s roots are deep in academic research. Language technology pioneers Fred Karlsson and Kimmo Koskenniemi from the University of Helsinki founded Lingsoft in 1986.
They had succeeded in modelling any word in a language-independent way and subsequently creating a structural analysis of the language. Structural analysis can help teach a machine to recognise the building blocks of a word and their meaning – in other words, the word formation and grammar rules of the language are taught to the machine. These rules allow the machine to understand the language without having to teach it the different inflections of each word separately. Structural analysis of human language is an efficient and economical way to model the language into a machine-readable format, so it quickly became a global standard.
These ground-breaking innovations put Koskenniemi and Karlsson in the digitalisation and new economy field at a time when the transformation of language processing was still just an idea and a promise of something big. Lingsoft’s early years coincided with the first generation of artificial intelligence, which was rule-based solutions.
The 2000s were characterised by cooperation between machines and people
Lingsoft Group started with the vision of Turku resident Juhani Reiman, when his translation company Pasanet Oy acquired Lingsoft in 2002. This combined solid experience in providing customer-oriented language services with top language technology expertise.
The development work continued actively as language technology was packaged into language tools and software for sale to customers. The technology was also applied to language services in order to provide customers with even more efficient service.
Key words of the 2010s: machine learning and digitalisation of language
Sales of software as products became less prominent as language technologies were increasingly integrated into Lingsoft’s service production. The focus shifted from product sales to customer-oriented services, offering comprehensive solutions to meet customers’ language needs.
The role of machine learning increased when Gurusoft, founded by Teuvo Korhonen, became part of Lingsoft Group. Machine learning and deep neural networks became an integral part of areas like speech recognition, machine translation and text mining.
In addition to translation services, Lingsoft’s service offering had increased to include localisation, content production, subtitling, transcription and term management. Development of these services continues today. Various language management services and solutions help customers process and use linguistic data. The pace of digitalisation continued to accelerate as the decade progressed, meaning that it was necessary to mechanically process language to an even greater extent. Lingsoft’s smart tools were modified into many language solutions tailored to meet customer needs. New digital solutions – from speech recognition technology to information extraction – made the work more efficient and saved time.
2020s – Looking to the future as a language intelligence company
Lingsoft has boldly responded to the challenge of rapid technology development. We are a language service-driven AI and solution company that utilises large language models and machine learning. Our strategic core competence is language processing for our customers’ needs.
Artificial intelligence is also revolutionising the language sector. Lingsoft has followed the principle of ‘human in the loop’ for a long time. This means that automation speeds up work and makes it more efficient, but a person is always responsible for quality assurance.
Using large language models and other AI technologies responsibly and safely is important, because we want to develop while putting customer interests first.
Artificial intelligence can automate an increasing number of work tasks or phases, and Lingsoft wants to be an enabler of this development. In this case, human work can focus on what the machine cannot do: expertise, encounters and presence, decision-making and the creation of new things.
Our vision is for Lingsoft to produce the most innovative language services in Europe and lead the way in terms of developing language technologies.
1986 Fred Karlsson, Kimmo Koskenniemi and Keijo Kaivanto establish Lingsoft.
1988 First order from a large ICT compan: Finnish language hyphenation and proofreading in WordPerfect.
1993 Juhani Reiman and Mauri Pasanen establish PasaNet Oy.
Its first job involves localising DEC’s DECwrite text processing tool.
1994 The EU becomes a PasaNet translation customer for the first time via a third party. The internet becomes more prevalent and PasaNet gets its first website.
1995 Localisation work for one of the world’s largest software giants, which opens the door for delivering proofreading tools to the same operator.
2000 Lingsoft presents the world’s first application controlled by Finnish language speech at the international CeBit exhibition. The speech technology era has begun.
2002 PasaNet buys Lingsoft. Lingsoft becomes the brand for the entire group.
2006 Lingsoft purchases the Ellibs eBookstore.
2008 IKITIK (Information and language technology to support health information and communication) -cooperation involves studying the opportunities of language technology solutions in developing health information systems.
2009 IKITIK actors become a consortium. Lingsoft’s goal is to increase the efficiency of healthcare language processes with a language service platform.
Lingsoft releases the first quality checker for health care and medicine.
Lingsoft purchases The English Centre language service company.
2010 An Itella speech recognition solution that utilises Lingsoft’s speech technology is selected as ICT project of the year.
2011 Lingsoft wins the contract to provide subtitling to the Finnish public broadcaster (Yle).
Lingsoft wins the contract to provide the City of Espoo with transcription services. The entire transcription service business gets its start at the same time.
2012 Lingsoft is selected as the European Parliament’s primary provider for translations into Finnish and Swedish and a secondary provider for German translations.
Lingsoft starts developing its own machine translation based on the Moses system developed in EU projects.
2013 Gurusoft, which focuses on visual information retrieval, becomes part of Lingsoft.
The customers and resources of Suomen Puheentunnistus are transferred to Lingsoft.
Lingsoft is listed as one of the world’s 100 largest language service companies (CSA Research).
2014 Acquisition of the Dicteon digital dictation system. The Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa and Hospital District of North Ostrobothnia become customers at the same time. A successful pilot in HUS-Servis: language tools can clearly improve the quality, usability and cost-effectiveness of patient texts.
2021 Lingsoft has a strong foothold in the healthcare, public administration, corporate and media segments and in various European Union institutions.
2022 Large language models attract global attention when OpenAI launches the ChatGPT artificial intelligence solution. Lingsoft begins to study the application of language models to its own production processes.
2023 Lingsoft becomes Finland’s largest language service company.
2024 Lingsoft is a long-term and trusted partner. The European Parliament and Commission, Planmeca Oy, Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, iLOQ Oy, Finnish Parliament and many other organisations are valuable customers with whom we want to develop as a language intelligence company towards the future.