Last updated on February 2nd, 2018
In theory, miscommunication happens due to a variety of barriers that include geographical, cultural, socio-psychological, and several other factors. However, the language is believed to be the biggest barrier among all the others.
If you are a power Internet user, you might be knowing about Google translation and other similar services to translate text to make things easier for you. But, what if you don’t have to do anything at all? What if translation happens in real-time?
A London-based startup took things to the next level to make it happen with its amazing app – Odle.
Odle is an interesting social networking app available for Android and iOS. In addition, it also offers a web version for desktop users.
It is primarily a social networking app with unique real-time translation capability using Google’s API. For instance, if you’re talking to someone who does not recognize your language but you still want to do business with him/her. In a similar situation, Odle app would help you easily communicate without any language barriers.
Whenever you send a text message or start a video call, Odle would either perform text-to-text translation or voice-to-voice translation (depending on what you initiate) in real-time.
So, yes, you can also utilize this social networking app as a dating application as well. Well, if it’s a social network, you may talk business or love, eh?
The app equips you with the ability to send/receive friend requests. You can also try finding friends nearby or discover people from across the world. Just like any other social networking platform, Odle lets you comment on activities of your friend, join a group (or a private one), invite your friends to an event, tag people when you upload a video, and also upload photos.
Within the app, for now, it lets you control your privacy, notifications and also allows you to enable/disable the language translation functionality.
Odle’s recent press release lets us know about the growth of the startup:
Through a closed beta, the startup already has over 600,000 users worldwide, recently raised $220k in seed funding and are currently raising Series A, $5 million.
Also, the Odle’s press release does mention its story behind the creation of this app as:
The Odle team believes the power unleashed by Odles’ app will help people to overcome language barriers and will change people’s lives for the better, strengthening relationships worldwide, just like the strength of the Odle mountain range in Italy.
Born in a small town in Sana’a, Yemen and not able to speak English, Odles’ founder, Maged Gamani, survived the civil war.
As an immigrant, he was forced to flee his homeland to make a new life overseas. He has had to move mountains to launch Odle, who was born through his frustration of not being able to speak the languages of the new countries he settled in. These days he speaks every language of course, with the power of Odle.
Wrapping Up
Odle’s natural language processing works flawlessly. However, the app is still in early stages and has got a lot to improve. Also, Odle’s team at Tech Crunch Disrupt recently talked about building its own API to improve its language translation capability in the near future.
It is available to download for Android and iOS. You can also visit their official site for the desktop version.
I am a English language teacher who works with refugee children in the USA. This app sounds great. Would it be something I can use with my kids and their parents? Google translate is terrible! My students and their families speak Arabic and Turkish. It’s so important for me to be able to ommunicate with families! Thanks