In the UK’s online Telegraph, there is a great review of some competitors’ products being tested out in London’s Chinatown.

The writer clearly outlines some of the key frustrations in trying to communicate in different languages, as well as the pitfalls of using more traditional tools like phrasebooks. We had exactly the same experiences a year or two ago, which ultimately compelled us to develop the Lingopal software.

His mention of wanting to be able to chat a little with his Polish cleaners is telling. Foreign-speaking people are everywhere these days, and the opportunitites of engaging with them are abundant. It just takes a little bit of effort and courage, and with tools like Lingopal to assist, it’s actually made very easy.

The products reviewed look pretty good, and we can see some clear similarities between them and Lingopal. The Trinvo, for example, comes with 12 languages, and they can be used in any configuration. We do the same, only with 44 languages. Like the Lonely Planet app, Lingopal also loads onto a user’s phone, meaning they don’t have to buy a separate gadget. Unlike Lonely Planet, Lingopal will work on multiple handsets across numerous manufacturers (our J2Me product is due for release in a matter of weeks).

The price is an interesting one. Our whole raison d’être is to get more people speaking to foreigners, no matter where you or they are from. Part of doing that is not only making a really practical and useful product, but also making it affordable. We like to think that US$4.95 for 44 languages is a pretty good deal.

And then there’s the content. Yes, wanting to know the time, where the toilet is, and where the train station is are all important things to know for any traveller. And you get all of them with Lingopal. But they’re only a small slice of a foreign experience. Often, the memorable and richer experiences are those where you engage on a more social level. That’s why we’ve loaded up Lingopal with (literally) hundreds of fun phrases so you can chat, flirt and insult. Just like the catch-phrase says.

Doing all the recordings for Lingopal has been a fun, though sometimes trying experience.

Consider. We’ve got:

• 44 languages
• of which a number have male and female versions, and
• there are nearly 1000 phrases for each language

That makes for a fair bit of studio time. Fortunately, there are a couple of great recording studios here in Perth, Hamdon Sound Studios and Music Design Systems who have made the whole process as painless as possible. Here’s Frank from Music Design Systems doing his thing.

Frank from MDS

There have been a number of hurdles along the way. The first, and most obvious one was finding the talent – not only must they be native speakers, but they also had to understand English, speak well and have a sense of humour. That has meant plenty of trawling around backpackers, universities and immigrant community groups by yours truly. Actually that has had fringe benefits on occasion, but that’s for another post …

Some of the problems were more cultural. I well remember not one, but two separate Spanish gents who took umbrage at some of the phrases I asked them to record, and walked out. The second was quite amusing. Recently married and quite religious, I recall him saying to me, “How can you say zeez tings to a woman? No, no. When I look at my wife, I see ze sun and moon. I tell her, you are my stars, my world. For true love, zees are ze tings you must say to woman.”

And it must be said, Mills and Boon have made an industry with such lines, so there must be some truth in it.

Another funny one was an Asian chap, who, on reaching a word with an ‘f’ sound, broke into a stutter so aggressive I feared his ribs would crack. My initial reaction was one of dismay that he had the gall to put himself up as a ‘recording talent’. The studio engineer and I looked at each other in horror, then back at the poor devil. Thirty seconds later he was still stuttering. I made some quick calculations in my head and inwardly groaned: Studio time per hour ($) x 1000 phrases x 2nd read-throughs ...

The fellow was now sweating, his face twisted in concentration as he tried to expel the word from his lips. F..f..finally he did it. There was an uncomfortable silence as he readied himself for the next phrase, and I quickly scanned the document for more ‘f’ sounding words. After a good few seconds Tim, the engineer, said very dryly, ‘Perhaps we should try that one again.’

While two thirds of blogs on WordPress.com are in English there is a long tail of other languages. The next 7 languages total 24.5% and there are a host of other languages in the remaining 9.5%. That’s a lot of languages to understand:

8% Spanish
5% Indonesian
4% Portuguese
2% Italian
2% German
2% French
1.5% Turkish
and another 9.5% of other languages.

As with the web, you often don’t know just who you are going to meet, and what language you’ll need to speak.

This is particularly true in international cities (such as New York, DC, Sydney, and pretty much any city in Europe). We’ve also found plenty of interesting languages (and people!) in tourist destinations like Perth, Wellington, Cusco and Budapest.

That’s why we made sure that Lingopal has 44 languages from the start – and there will be more coming. With Lingopal you can start a conversation -we’ve found that even something as simple as asking for a good coffee in Turkish can lead to fascinating times: 

Where is a place that makes great coffee?

Güzel kahve yapan bir yer söyleyebilir misiniz?

<update>

Via a new stats page, we can see a few more of the WordPress languages

English: 69%
Spanish: 10%
Portuguese: 6.6%
Italian: 2.4%
Turkish: 1.5%
German: 1.4%
Indonesian: 1.4%
French:1.2%
Polish: 1.1%
Swedish: 0.9%
Farsi: 0.8%
Romanian: 0.8%
Dutch: 0.5%
Vietnamese: 0.5%
Polish: 0.4%
Greek: 0.4%
Arabic: 0.3%
Finnish: 0.2%
Norwegian: 0.2%
Thai: 0.1%

he web is slowly embracing (or being embraced by) new languages, but for now English has a lot more content than its global language share. 

for example, this  NYTimes article says that Asia has twice as many Internet users as North America, and yet there is a shortage of non-English content and applications. From the article:

Google recently introduced news aggregation sites in Hindi and three major South Indian languages, and a transliteration tool for writing in five Indian languages. Its search engine operates in nine Indian languages, and can translate search results from the English Web into Hindi and back.

They have a way to go though – there are 22 languages in use in India, and countless others throughout the world. At Lingopal we applaud Google’s efforts.

“because English is not enough” is the slogan of Quillpad, a mobile phone application for typing in 10 South Asian languages.

and that’s a slogan we can also agree with.

Pretending to be foreign in the hope of making one seem more attractive to the opposite sex is not an uncommon thing – I failed miserably as Viktor the Lithuanian poet, and Helmut the German conscientious objector, until Phillipe Jeanneau emerged, the sailor from Marseilles.

Back then I had a bare smattering of French words, but a passable accent and enough fabricated mistakes when speaking English worked wonders.

Of course they were never sustainable.

Rosie caught me out the following night when she passed me in a bar as I was talking to a friend about rugby.

Tamara (I placed bogus emphasis on the second syllable of her name) overheard me talking normally on the phone, and things really hit the skids on the night I made moves on a young lady who turned out to be a French teacher.

Much the same thing happens in Foux Da Fa Fa, an amusing parody of ’60s French songs by Flight of the Conchords, the NZ duo who recently won a Grammy award.

Enjoy.