Leidos sells off a portion of its language business

EDITOR's NOTE: This story has been updated to clarify that Leidos is only selling a portion of its language business.

Some portfolio shaping is underway at the newly launched Leidos Inc. with the company selling its translation technology business to Applications Technology LLC.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed, but AppTek was buying intellectual property that includes automated speech recognition and machine translation software tools.

The technology allows two-way and one-way translations of more than 30 languages and numerous dialects, according to an AppTek release.

A Leidos spokeswoman said the deal was part of ongoing portfolio shapaing. "We are continually evaluating our portfolio and may take additional actions in the future," the spokeswoman said.

The sale only includes a portion of the company's language business, the Leidos spokeswoman said.

AppTek officials see a growing market for the technology. Quoting the research firm Markets and Markets, the company said the market for interactive voice response, speech analytics, machine translation, and dictation technologies are expected to grow from $3.8 billion in 2013 to $9.9 billion in 2018.

“Rapid evolution of the media landscape provides us the opportunity to expand our solution and services to international commercial clients,” said Mudar Yaghi, co-CEO of AppTek.

AppTek currently has language software systems including a hybrid machine translation engine that fuses rule-based and statistical-based engines. The company has applications for media monitoring, closed captioning, subtitling, mobile devices and telephony solutions.

The company has government and commercial clients. It is headquartered in McLean, Va.

Seabrook Partners LLC acted as a financial advisor for AppTek and Bringham McCutchen LLP provided legal support.