According to TransPerfect’s study, there are basically four major stumbling-blocks for people traveling abroad, and those include; difficulties with public transportation, dining out, reading signs and other civic communications, and booking hotels online. Anyone who has traveled very far afield can easily identify with the problems TransPerfect reinforces here.
Depending on which destination the traveler find themselves at, these situations can be blatantly inhibiting or mildly aggravating.
The press release via TransPerfect cites a statement from Co-CEO Liz Elting (top left):
“We help eliminate these obstacles for travel-related businesses with solutions such as GlobalLink, the travel industry’s leading software for streamlining the process of website translation.”
Obviously TransPerfect’s data confirms one of the biggest problems anyone faces when abroad – figuring out where the heck one is, and heading in the right direction should not be a function of asking 50 people “which way do I go?” Likewise, dining out involves guessing or asking questions when reading menus or even finding the restroom.
And anyone surfing the web to find online travel deals has run across the Web 1.0 website barely translated into their language – sometimes incorrectly. The story of the tower of Babel rings truer every time a traveler visits a country where the language is unfamiliar.
Of course TransPerfect offers and number of language solutions including their most recent iPhone app that actually translates text taken with the camera so that people can understand road signs and what not. Pretty groundbreaking technology if you ask me. For a look on the lighter side of translation technology, take a look at the video below from iLingual.
Obviously, conquering the language barrier altoghether is really not that far away. But, who would have thought via a cell phone?