Since Wired journalist Jeff Howe coined the term “crowdsourcing” in 2006, an entire industry (led mostly by startups) has been created, and some players are even getting some attention from VCs. The latest is myGengo, a crowdsourced or “human cloud” translation service that employs a network of 3,000 native speakers to process massive amounts of text. What differentiates it from other smaller professional translation agencies, according to the company, is not necessarily the sheer size of orders in can take but rather that it’s about 70 percent cheaper.

These two factors are what managed to secure myGengo its first funding round of $5.25 million, led by London-based VC firm Atomico and 500 Startups. It follows $1.75 million in seed funding from a number of angel investors.

“With these technologies accessible to more and more people worldwide, it’s just inevitable that more trade, more communication, more creativity happens across borders. But language is still a huge barrier,” says myGengo Founder and CEO Robert Laing.

“Way back, if you wanted to make a phone call, you would dial the operator, tell them the number, get connected. Now you can Skype video your grandmother with one click. In some ways, translation is still stuck at that ‘dial the operator’ stage. We need to make the same leaps for cross-language communication and really close the loop.”

myGengo also released some data about its growth rate, noting that their revenue grew 1000 percent in the past 12 months, and that their human cloud translated over 15 million words in 15 different languages.   myGengo’s API has also enabled the startup to rapidly expand the reach of its product, extending its platform to developers and resulting in some pretty interesting services.

What’s important for myGengo at this point is its ability to globalize other businesses and ventures.  It takes a specialized service to leverage the human cloud around language, which is steeped in its own cultural guise in ever pocket of the world.  This puts myGengo in a unique position, offering some interesting perspective on global trends.

“Something that interests me currently is watching how quite senior Japanese businesspeople use Facebook. For many years people said “oh Facebook will never make it in Japan, Mixi is too strong,” and I think that could happen in a few other places too. It’s something that has only started in the past 6 months or so here, but these guys aren’t using Mixi, they’re not using LinkedIn, they’re using what for many people in the West is a ‘friends-only-zone’ for high-level business messaging,” says Laing.

“In terms of the rest of the world, I think the best way to see this stuff is to go on Geeks on a Plane, if you can! GOAP is interesting because it’s about seeing what young technology companies are doing in different regions, and these people often have the best idea of the ‘next big thing’ in Latin America for example.”

Now fresh with funds, myGengo is ready to take its company to the next level.  That means steady resources being poured into its worldwide presence, marketing and maintaining its product’s strength.

“Our customers want a great product, so clearly our core engineering & product team will grow in Japan. And we’re not afraid to bet big on the market with our marketing and sales teams in the US (and sales in Europe). But most importantly, we’re investing heavily in our two most important communities: translators and developers,” says Laing.

“Specifically in the near term, we’re greatly improving our support for app localization, because we’re seeing huge increases in usage by app developers and a valuable market. Longer-term, our product improvements will be all about improved convenience, easier distribution and bigger scale, making cross-border communication accessible to literally everyone.

“Languages we are adding will be Asian-focused as that is where the largest new markets are.”