Airbnb translator “speaks” Sicilian: created by an immigrant from Bagheria who now lives in San Francisco

Salvatore Giammarci, from Bagheria, who immigrated to San Francisco, has created a new automatic translation engine built for the Airbnb portal, and the vacation rental platform has created a new system to automatically translate all the content on the site into the language of the country where you live. A system that can be applied to many platforms

Until now, Airbnb has automatically displayed all content created by the company itself, displaying so-called “user-generated content” (user-generated content, such as descriptions of homes, experiences, and reviews) in the original language in which it was created. For those who wanted to see it translated, it was necessary to click on the “Translate” button.

The Translation Engine changes this concept: all content, even those created by users, will be automatically translated into their language. The end result is a high-quality, human-like translation, rather than a generic computer translation.

Giammarresi directs the group that collaborates with all Airbnb teams to adapt all products, emails, marketing campaigns and any form of communication to local realities. “Localizing content not only means translating it from one language to another, but also logically adapting it to make it culturally, legally and practically appropriate for each country and language in which our service is served – says Giammarresi – the new engine for Airbnb’s application of machine translation to UGCs on a large scale.”

The system allows users to automatically read translations of reviews and descriptions in more than 60 languages without having to click the translate button.