Airbnb's bad translator function when reviewing a stay

Jacob231
Level 9
Copenhagen, Denmark

Airbnb's bad translator function when reviewing a stay

Airbnb's translation is not good enough to be used on the platform if it can translate from Spanish "guest must climb stairs" into English "guest must climb LADDER" which is suggests very odd and difficult access to the apartment and which is totally wrong and misleading and will scare next guests away! Also Airbnb translated "hand shower" into "MOBILE shower", which suggets there is no shower in the apartment when there in fact is!
On the other hand, Airbnb is not willing to change the review and keeps referring to nothing in the review is violating according to their policy and that I should not worry about this review left by an "odd guest" and that I should just leave a reply to that review telling "my side of the story".
This is completely ridicoulous, as the guest is not an odd guest but just left a review in his mother tongue Spanish, and there is no "my side of the story" as if some conflict.
The problem lies entirely within Airbnb's translator. Yet, they don't want to do anything about it. Very disappointing.

 

1 Reply 1
Joelle43
Top Contributor
Cannes, France

Hello @Jacob231 

 

I read your post with great interest and totally agree with you as I have had exactly the same issue with a very poor translation from a German guest into French last summer.   It said the complete opposite of what they meant so instead of translating that the beds were comfortable, the translation went for "not comfortable beds" because they used a term that completely confused the translation app and turned the 5* into something hideous.

 

Called CS who were useless and despite me telling them numerous times that I was not asking for the guest review to be changed at all, I just wanted it to reflect what they had written, I got no where and the only thing they could do was to delete this great review if the guest requested it.  Why would you want to delete a 5* review I asked??? So the only thing I could do was write a public reply, basically thanking them for the great review and saying that I was glad that they found the beds comfortable and liked the high end features but regret not having mentioned that the translation was poor.  Luckily, the translation from German to English is better but have no idea if the translation is massacred in other languages.

 

Yes, totally frustrating I agree and difficult to understand that Airbnb doesn't use a better translation service.

 

Joëlle