Translated signs with Airbnb the largest private deal in the history of translation

Rome, 24th Nov, 2021

Translated signed a deal with Airbnb to make content on the hosting platform available in over 60 languages through a perfect symbiosis of professional translators and machine translation (MT). Airbnb will be using Translated’s professional services and will power its new Translation Engine with Translated’s proprietary technology ModernMT. Based on the number of languages involved (over 60) and the word count to be translated, top industry publication Multilingual has proclaimed the deal to be the largest private-sector contract in the language industry. This is a job that would have required 300,000 person-years without the cutting-edge solution developed by Translated to allow everyone to understand and be understood in their own language.

A Perfect symbiosis of professionals and MT


While professionals are busy translating Airbnb-created content such as UI, email messages, legal, and help center, the machine translation takes care of all user-generated content such as listing descriptions reviews. During the whole process, the MT instantly learns from the work done by professionals and adapts its output to provide the closest-to-human machine translation possible. Based on two independent evaluations, Airbnb claims that the translations provided through the symbiotic system designed by Translated improve the quality of more than 99% of the listings on the platform.

Ditching the Translate Button


Airbnb will remove the ‘translate’ button from its application and provide users with content in their chosen language by default. «Users should always be presented with content that they can understand, regardless of whether it is Airbnb-created or user-generated content. We are making history by claiming a new UX bar: by ditching the ‘translate’ button, we are assuming responsibility for the quality of the content translated by artificial intelligence» says Salvatore Giammarresi, Airbnb Head of Localization.
This UX change will not only give users access to content that was once not easily accessible. but it will also allow them to efficiently search the content on the platform for the property that best fits their needs, whether these are the needs of the growing number of cross-border travelers, people looking for non-urban destinations and alternative accommodation, or new remote workers.
«We are excited to have Airbnb embrace our human-centric culture and invest in our symbiotic approach to translation. By increasing the number of translations done by professionals, we are also increasing the quality of the work done by machines. This way, we have a symbiotic team able not only to increase the quality of the translated content but also to translate a number of words that would otherwise have been unreachable. We firmly believe that humans and machines are better together.»
Marco Trombetti – Translated CEO




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