Hostelworld, the largest online hostel-booking platform sparking social experiences, launches an extension to its iOS and Android app – allowing users to instantly translate between up to 43 languages in a fun and engaging way.
Utilising Google Cloud Translate software, the ‘Speak the World’ translator makes the Hostelworld app not only to enable travellers to book over 35,000 hostels, but also speak fluently in 43 languages. It helps travellers to go even further off the beaten track and fully immerse themselves in the local culture by eliminating language barriers.
Speak the World will feature 43 languages including Bengali, English, French, Hindi, Japanese, Romanian, Spanish, and Thai. Available on iOS and Android, the app allows global travellers to overcome language barriers in real time.
With just a few simple taps the translator is ready to go; simply speak into the device’s microphone and wait for your words to be translated. The feature will then listen to the response and translate that back to you, and so on. In addition, the device’s screen can be set to show a comedic mouth and lips that move with the words, providing the ultimate icebreaker when meeting new people.
Powering this development is Google Cloud Translate’s neural machine translation, which by utilising state-of-the-art training techniques has achieved the largest improvements to date for machine translation quality.
Breffni Horgan, Head of Product at Hostelworld, said: “The Hostelworld app already allows people to find and instantly book quality affordable accommodation with personalised itineraries showcasing the best things to do whilst travelling. With the launch of ‘Speak the World’ the app will now empower travellers to go even further off the beaten track and more fully immerse themselves in local culture. Our amazing selection of more than 35,000 hostels has already helped young travellers get over the cost barrier, and now with the help of new technology we’re helping them tackle the language barrier in a fun way, too.”
