Airbnb automatically translates listing despite proper translation?

[David13348]

Hi community!

The automatic Airbnb translation of my listing makes little sense. I already have proper translations into various languages, but the automatic feature overrules that.

How can I stop this?

So my question is NOT how I see the original title/language, but how I get the listing to show in MY translated version?

E.g. Listing is originally created in English and Norwegian. In a Norwegian browser, it uses the English version and traslates it into Norwegian, with a lot of linguistic errors.

Thank you!

[Joelle43]

Hello @David13348 

I too have done my own translation of my French listing into English so went to double check if it was my translation showing or Airbnb's version when I logged into Airbnb.co.uk -  It's mine!

However, I created my original listing in French as it's in France and then took Airbnb up on translating my listing into English.  Is that what you did too? 

Are you saying that when you view your listing in Norwegian, it's not in Norwegian but in pigeon English?  If I view your listing on the UK site, we see this:

Is this your translation or Airbnb's?

[David13348]

Thank you for your promt reply Joelle and for taking the time to check out the listing.

The translation is my own, so it shows correct. Have you unticked "automatic translation" on the globe-icon next to your username, top right of the screen?

My problem is that airbnb uses the English translation (which I did) and translates it back into gibberish Norwegian, despite having a correct Norwegian translation. If I play with the "language setting" icon (automatic translation off), I get the correct Norwegian version.

This problem doesn't appear in other languages, so might be a bug.?

[Joelle43 · Accepted solution]

@David13348 - yes automatic translation is turned off in host mode so that any messages coming through in English aren't translated (not always accurately😉)

However, I turned it on to see if my listing would appear differently if viewed by an English speaking person and it's still my translation just like @Shelley159 mentions.

OK so hopefully if your local market is looking to book your place, they will not have the automatic translation on?  Out of curiosity, the listing was first created in Norwegian right?

[David13348]

Yes, correct @Joelle43 , in Norwegian. It seems auto translate is on by default, and I do not know if people actively change it. Most of interest for our Airbnb comes from within the country, so it would be an advantage to not have it gibberish-translated back into the original language.

Do any of you know if it is possible to escalate these issues to Airbnb, so that they can look at their coding?

[Shelley159]

Hi @David13348 

I'll follow this thread to see if someone has a solution, but I'm afraid auto-translate can be a sticky problem. I wrote my original text in English to avoid translation, but I've always had this call-out that some text was auto-translated (? ... from English to English?)

I've compared the translated and original versions and can find no differences.

Reviews are also auto-translated. One of my favourite Community Center posts was by someone who was trying to get a review removed due to poor translation. The guest was trying to add helpful information about the apartment for future guests, so they wrote "must climb stairs". It auto-translated to "must climb ladder"!? 😆🤣 (which would clearly be a notable problem for future guests with suitcases ...)

[David13348]

Hi Shelley, thank you.

Haha, well, that is annoying. I suppose it is some kind of bug in certain fields / language versions of the website.