Lost in translation

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Prior to booking the Garden Room, our latest guests made an enquiry as to whether we had any bicycles on site that they could borrow or hire and if not whether we could send them details of the nearest bike hire shop. They were flying into Birmingham from Germany and our correspondence was being translated by abb’s translation service.

When we first moved here both Susie and I had bicycles but abandoned them almost immediately because our house, located 1350 feet up hill, is actually one of the highest houses in England – everywhere is downhill from our place and our place is uphill from everywhere else.

It was exhilarating and breezy speeding downhill for twenty minutes to the nearest town but quite frankly it was absolutely exhausting pushing our cycles uphill for an hour and three quarters to get back home. And so fourteen years ago we knocked cycling on the head and, with judgement being the better part of valour, became committed car enthusiasts.

I sold my bike in 2020 and Susie’s is still languishing in the barn, covered in straw dust and swallow guano with perished tyres and a flakey saddle. Not a good prospect for loan or hire.

Anyhow, I messaged our guests with a brief explanatory of our bicycle status and dutifully looked up and found a local cycle hire shop (thirteen miles away) and sent them the details.

I didn’t get a reply but they did book with us and with exemplary Teutonic punctuality turned up bang on 3 o’clock for check-in last Friday.

And this is where I realized that something must have gone wrong with the translation service. Marta and Viktor were in their late 50’s and must have weighed at least 250 pounds each.

Marta was more spritely than Viktor and managed to get out of the passenger seat using a rocking/rolling motion, gradually building up momentum until she broke through the inertia and eased herself onto her two snooker-table-type legs. Viktor’s was an altogether less agile exit, heralded by a wheezing, hacking smoker’s cough, two pudgy hands white-knuckling the door frame, with one leg out of the car and the other held for what seemed an agonizing eternity by some unseen force inside the footwell. Struggle is real.

Handshakes and broken English all round, I showed them to their accommodation as they waddled and wheezed behind me. Honestly, there was no way they were going to be swinging their legs over a cross bar let alone actually riding a bike.

They never mentioned bicycles or commented on our earlier exchange and as for myself, bewildered as I was, I chose not to pursue any enquiry in that vein. But it’s left me wondering what it was that they were actually enquiring about and what on earth they made of my bikey reply.

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I’ve noticed the Airbnb translation has some real problems. I speak German and Spanish as well as English and some of the translations (Both ways) don’t make any sense, and in some cases will fabricate things, such as “you are free to use the pool” (even if there is no mention of a pool).

I suspect like most things Airbnb these days, they’ve employed some level of AI in the translation service as well, probably in the interest of sounding less “botic” and more friendly and welcoming.

Now, no translation service is perfect, but I’ve found that Google translate has become pretty good and sticks to the text written, not embellishing it with seemingly friendly chit chat, avoiding the risk of saying something that’s simply wrong or not what was intended.

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I am wondering if it was disabled scooter hire they were after.

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That quite odd. Purely out of curiosity, I would love to see the bit about requesting bikes in the original German. I wonder what they were actually asking for.

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Is there an option to read a guest message in its original language, or does Airbnb automatically translate it according to our language settings? Or was the guest’s message in German translated by you clicking a translate button on Airbnb?

(As I recall, I have had messages in both Spanish and English, but maybe that’s because I have both languages listed?)

If a guest message comes through in a language you don’t understand, I think it would be better to use the browser translator than Airbnb’s lousy translations. They probably cheap out on a translation app just like they cheap out on customer service and tech programmers who can’t add a feature without breaking 10 other features.

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In the app, for me it’s automatically translated from any language the message is written in, to my native language (English in my case).

But I think I may have selected “auto translate” in one of the settings in the Airbnb app. You can also choose to see the original message by selecting it and turning off translation for that message.

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Hello Muddy, the messages were already translated when they came through and actually I didn’t twig that they were being translated from German until we’d had a bit of back and forth.

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You, by far, spin the best yarn. Your description is too funny. Please be a regular…cannot wait for your next post. Cheers

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Very interesting discussion. I recently had guests from Germany, an older couple whose English was spotty at best. I am now wondering about the translation capabilities since our communication was rocky, although I used Google translate for some in-room messages to them and that seemed to help.

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Probably that they were older was a factor in their spotty English. I have found that most younger Europeans speak surprisingly good English. They are taught English in school and the younger generations engage in online communications with people all over the world, so they using and improving their English on a daily basis. I have rarely met a European who didn’t speak at least two languages, and many speak more than that. Of course the size and proximity and ease of travel between European countries is more condusive to speaking more than their native language than for those who live in huge countries where they are never exposed to any other languages.

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Correct. Minimum 2 languages here (except for Brits of course, unless they move abroad early in life).

I know people here who are fluent in 7 languages. Yes 7! It’s mind boggling to me. I struggle with 3.

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Just thought I’d pick up on this as I am currently hostly a Chinese guest who obviously messages in Chinese, which I am not fluent in - the app auto translates and funnily enough updates its translation as I read it until it is ‘happy’ with it. I have no idea whether it is correct of course, but I do also get emails with the first translation and the original language underneath it for reference when the message is first posted. Which is fun. Unfortunately for me the app doesn’t give me any indication of how to pronounce the booker’s name (just the Chinese characters), so I am glad we have google translate to the rescue!

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