Lost in the metro? Paris translation app aims to help visitors

The Paris metro has launched an instant translation app ahead of next year's Olympic Games to help hapless foreign visitors navigate the French capital's urban transport system.

Published: 27 November 2023 18:07 CET

Lost in the metro? Paris translation app aims to help visitors

The sign above an entrance of a Metro station in Paris. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP)

The meandering metro, featuring more than 300 stations whose names can be hard to find or pronounce even for natives, easily becomes a nightmare for anybody without fluent French.

The Summer Olympics, to be held in the French capital between July 26 and August 11, will bring millions of visitors without knowledge of French or even English to the capital, most of whom will be using public transport to shuttle between sports venues.

In comes Tradivia, an instant translation app able to handle 16 languages, with which metro operator RATP has equipped 6,000 of its staff across the network’s stations.

The app translates spoken queries, including in English, German, Mandarin, Hindi and Arabic, into French for the benefit of RATP’s agents whose responses then get translated back to the language of the visitor.

“We had a real issue here, because our agents can’t be expected to answer queries in all languages,” said Valerie Gaidot, customer experience head at RATP.

The app has been specifically tailored to the Paris metro experience, and knows its way around station names, itineraries and the various ticket and travel pass types that can leave tourists bewildered.

This, RATP said, is a decisive advantage over general translation help like Google Translate that sometimes fails to make sense of the metro’s idiosyncrasies.

After experimenting on three urban lines first, the operator rolled out the service across the network over the summer.

In addition, four languages — English, German, Italian and Spanish — are currently available for special platform announcements, with Mandarin and Arabic to be added before the Olympics.

Some 15 million people are expected in Paris and surrounding regions for the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games.

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Once a preferred spot for gala premieres, the UGC Normandie was one of several grand cinemas on the Champs-Elysées that made the area a hub for film buffs in the 1960s and 70s.

But the street long ago lost its cool among Parisians, becoming increasingly dominated by flagship fashion stores and tourists taking snaps of the Arc de Triomphe.

The UGC cinema chain said it faced a “very sharp increase in rent” at the location, which is owned by the Qatari royal family.

Two other famed cinemas on the boulevard, the George V and Gaumont Marignan, have closed since 2020.

“The cinema is disappearing in somewhat terrible circumstances for the whole culture,” said a former employee, 22-year-old Yann Raffin, adding that he feels both “sadness” and “anger”.

“This avenue is transforming into an avenue reserved for the ultra-rich,” he told AFP.

The last screening on Wednesday night was “La La Land” with Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, a fitting tribute to Hollywood musicals of a bygone era.

Its director, Damien Chazelle, appeared on screen with a special message for the sold-out crowd.

“This room was an extension of my own life, it was a friend and an ally,” said Mehdi Omais, 40, a film journalist, visibly moved.

“It’s heartbreaking to see it close and to see this avenue becoming a cemetery of cinemas.”

An auction of the chairs and decor was due on Thursday, including the huge letters on the outside, with proceeds going to a charity that organises screenings for hospitalised children.

Paris remains a film-going hotspot and still has more cinemas per head than anywhere in the world, with swanky new theatres opening elsewhere in the city.

They include a state-of-the-art Pathe cinema near the Opera Garnier, designed by architect Renzo Piano who created the Pompidou Centre and The Shard in London.