BYU professor develops translation app for use this year during the London Olympic Games

You may have heard that London will host the 2012 Olympic Games this summer, and as such it will become the temporary home of ambassadors, athletes and spectators from 216 countries. But what you may not have heard is that a new language translation application has been developed specifically for use at the Games on iPhone and Android devices, for free.

Thanks to Brigham Young University professor Giovanni Tata and his crew of programmers, The Olympic Translator is due to launch in May. Tata, director of creative works at BYU, said the idea behind the app is to streamline communication by making sure people can understand one another.

“The idea is that if you communicate with somebody and give them commands you want to make sure that you’re conveying the right message, because otherwise you could create a lot of confusion if you give the wrong directions or the wrong commands,” Tata said. “That’s what our purpose was, to provide a tool that people could have some confidence in using.”

The program’s database has 6000 phrases in 50 languages to help Olympic workers assist tourists in London for the games.

“So basically what we decided to do is to start collecting a lot of phrases that could be used during the Olympics in a variety of situations,” Tata said. “Like in emergency services, like for the police, but especially for the volunteers who are going to give directions to the tourists and athletes alike.”

Tata says the app will need to be finished by the end of May to give them time to deliver to the International Olympic Committee and volunteers. He says for now the app will be free and available to anyone on the Android Market and Apple Store, but after the London games are over it will be licensed and given a final name.

Alex Dupont

See Also

• More about machine translation
  Raw machine translation may be sufficient for communicating via social networks. However, you may have to consider human translation if you require high quality.
• BYU professor develops translation app for Olympics by Charles Beacham (The Daily Universe)
  The Olympic Translator, an app created by Professor Giovanni Tata, aims to help participants at the summer Olympics communicate with more ease.