The Magic of Messaging with Strangers

Salvo Giammarresi, Head of Localization at Airbnb, discusses Airbnb’s innovative approach to translation: focused on enhancing user experience and enabling seamless communication, it marks a human-centric application of technology in fostering global connections and mutual comprehension. 

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Meeting strangers

Meet Akira, born and raised in Japan. She lives in Hokkaido and only speaks and writes in Japanese. She understands a little bit of English, but not enough to hold a conversation. She has been planning a vacation in Paris and she found the perfect apartment on Airbnb, near Montmartre. She is excited to finally experience the city of lights and book her stay on Airbnb.

Her host, Sophie, is a true Parisian. Sophie was born and has spent most of her life in Paris. She is a native French speaker and writer. Sophie spent some years studying in London where she learned English, however she feels more comfortable using French, especially to have a meaningful social interaction, as she is more proficient with French vocabulary and nuances. Sophie loves being a host on Airbnb, as it allows her to showcase her beautiful city and get to know interesting people from all over the world. Plus, thanks to Airbnb, she earns enough money to fund her trips around the world.

That is when they realize that the other person doesn’t speak their respective language.
They have been messaging each other for weeks leading to this encounter. Akira has been typing and reading Sophie’s messages in Japanese, while Sophie has been typing and reading Akira’s messages in French. They never realized that there was an invisible translator in between them that removed the linguistic barrier that otherwise would have prevented them from connecting as human beings. Removing the language barrier allowed Akira to connect with Sophie, and thanks to her experience the wonders of Paris and allowed Sophie to fulfill her desire to be a host on Airbnb.

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The power and limits of language

Human language is fascinating and, in many ways, defines the human species, as it allows us to communicate, engage and cooperate with other human beings who speak the same language.
Human language has the power to start wars, make peace, show compassion, teach, comfort, resolve conflict, organize thoughts, deceive, state the facts, and the list goes on encompassing all of the activities that define human beings.
Human language sometimes can be seen as limiting, as it forces us to compress the wealth and fluid spectrum of feelings and thoughts we have in our mind into discrete words that often feel a mere ghost of what we really want to convey.
Yet for all its limitations human language is what allows a community of speakers to thrive, to organize, to gather, to govern, to educate and to live in harmony.
Written language has the power to expand the human minds over space and time. It allows future generations to learn from past generations of speakers of that language.

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Human language has the power to start wars, make peace, show compassion, teach, comfort, resolve conflict, organize thoughts, deceive, state the facts, and the list goes on encompassing all of the activities that define human beings.

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The power and limits of translation

Translation of human language further empowers language by expanding its reach across languages. Translation allows people near and far in space and time, to interact, to learn from each other, to establish connections and to elevate and progress the whole human species towards the future.
Since ancient times and to this day, trade and commerce at large is based on translation. Arguably commerce thrives when it’s not based “just” on translation, but also on a more nuanced understanding and approach to local culture, expectations, standards, and laws, in essence when commerce is based on localization.

Translation has its own limits and is perhaps best condensed in the expression “translator, traitor”. While most information can be translated from one language to the other, many translators and bilingual speakers know very well the feeling of not being able to fully capture the meaning of one language into the other. This can happen for many reasons, one of them being that each language is the variable and dynamic combined expression and reflection of the culture, the history, the norms, etc of the people who use it. And, to make things even more complicated, all this varies over time and across the users of the same language.
Yet despite all its possible limitations, human history on planet earth has developed into its present state thanks to the power and the limitations of translation.

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The conundrum of being a localization expert

Content and localization professionals working with language and translation in modern high tech companies, get to harness their power and witness first hand all their limitations, every single day.
Mature companies have developed very powerful source language content strategies across their products, marketing, comms, legal and customer support platforms. And the most mature companies have developed very impactful localization strategies to capture market share in each country they operate in.
Localization teams in mature high tech companies make their companies global by not just translating, but by localizing their products, services and marketing to the ever growing multilingual and multicultural online users. The most mature localization strategies focus on ensuring that their end to end customer experience in any of the supported languages is as thoughtful and impactful as the experience in the source language.

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Localization teams in mature high tech companies make their companies global not just by translating, but by localizing their products, services and marketing to the ever growing multilingual and multicultural online users.

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In this sense localization teams and strategies are human-centric by definition, as their goal is to create a product experience that feels tailored to each customer, regardless of how it was produced.
For many companies this is the apex of their localization maturity. Unfortunately many companies haven’t yet reached that level of multilingual and multicultural maturity, and at best they just “translate” their source content.
Even for companies with the most mature localization strategies, at best, they are still localizing a one-way communication, from the company to the user.

What if we could apply the power of localization to all aspects of our products?
What if we could apply the power of translation to the two-way communication that occurs online?
What if we could make translation a “feature” that connects humans and harnesses the power of language and translation?

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Empowering human connections through translations

Airbnb’s vision is to connect people. To turn strangers into friends by sharing a space or an experience.
Many hosts and guests alike talk about their Airbnb experience in terms of human connection. Human connection occurs across many levels and in diverse ways. The ideal way is to use the same language. This gives both people access to the same wealth of linguistic nuances available to highly proficient users of a language.
If the host and guest don’t use the same language, they then opt to use a shared language which, although they might not have high proficiency, allows them to connect at some level. This might lead to some misunderstanding, but it’s better than not even sharing a shred of a common language.
The third possibility is for each speaker to use their most preferred language and rely on translation.

What if we could get rid of the “Translate” button altogether?
What if we could show all our content, regardless if it was written by Airbnb or created by our users using different languages (in reviews and home descriptions), in your preferred language?
This is what we achieved with the launch of Translation Engine. Thanks to state-of-the-art adaptive AI-powered machine translation (provided by Translated, Imminent’s publisher) plus a series of engineering and architectural solutions created and maintained by Airbnb, we accomplished what many thought impossible.
We managed to improve the quality of the automatic translation, while improving its performance (the speed at which it runs) and reducing our unit costs.
These breakthroughs unlocked a new user interaction design paradigm in which all content was shown in the user’s preferred language, and instead of showing a “Translate” button, we could show, when needed, a more discreet option to “View Original” if a user wanted to read the original.

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Human connection occurs across many levels and in diverse ways. The ideal way is to use the same language. This gives both people access to the same wealth of linguistic nuances available to highly proficient users of a language.

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Removing the language barrier on Airbnb

Deploying the power of Translation Engine on Airbnb’s platform helped remove the language barrier between millions of hosts and guests. Guests now could read, in their own language, the reviews of other guests written in other languages.
Most importantly, using Airbnb’s messaging feature, millions of guests and hosts could now connect and engage seamlessly, like Akira and Sophie, via chat in real time.
The launch of Translation Engine was one of the most human-centric applications of translation in a large high-tech company that enables about 4 million guests each day to stay at the physical home of a stranger thanks to Airbnb. Translation Engine is the latest, and one of the most innovative, iterations of the history of machine translation, which is one of the earliest testbed, adopters and wide-scale use of AI technology.
Smart and human-centric applications of this technology, such as in Airbnb’s messenger app, are the early stages of a different type of future, in which AI and AI-powered features are an aid to humans and help humans do what is uniquely human, like connecting and sharing the love for a city.

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