
Launch HN: Tarjimly (YC W18 Nonprofit) – Realtime Translators for Refugees - atifjaved
Hi HN!<p>This is Atif and Aziz, co-founders of Tarjimly (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tarjim.ly" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tarjim.ly</a>) - a nonprofit that allows bilingual speakers to volunteer as translators for the 23 million refugees worldwide using anonymous chat, phone, and video. All for free.<p>Aziz and I graduated MIT during the Syrian refugee crisis. Our friends and family all told us about the dire situation, but one problem stuck out: refugees desperately struggled to communicate with the medics, lawyers, and aid workers trying to help them. We built Tarjimly as a way to remotely translate by connecting over Facebook Messenger.<p>A year later, our community of 3000+ volunteer translators has helped over 1500 refugees and aid workers globally.<p>- Translators come back because it finally gives them a way to do more than just donate money or post online.<p>- Refugees come back because machine translation (e.g. Google Translate) for refugee languages severely lacks accuracy and situational awareness.<p>- Aid Workers come back because paid translators are expensive and don&#x27;t even come close to meeting demand.<p>We validated these problems by interviewing over 300 refugees and aid workers and doing a 2-week field study in Greece: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@tarjimly&#x2F;greece-trip-research-reflections-900889b3e6f5" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;medium.com&#x2F;@tarjimly&#x2F;greece-trip-research-reflection...</a><p>We built a model to predict translator response based on their previous interactions and ping those who are most likely to respond at the time of request. It takes an average of 90 seconds to get connected to a translator from our passive pool and our current match rate is 92%.<p>We see Tarjimly growing into an organization that provides micro-volunteerism at macro-scale. We want to work at the front lines of the world&#x27;s humanitarian needs, in any country that may be. We&#x27;re looking forward to hearing your feedback and any ideas or experiences you&#x27;ve had in this area. And if you or your friends are bilingual, consider signing up as a translator!<p>TC: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;02&#x2F;13&#x2F;bilingual-tarjimly-lets-you-help-a-refugee-or-aid-worker-right-now&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;techcrunch.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;02&#x2F;13&#x2F;bilingual-tarjimly-lets-yo...</a><p>Video: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tarjim.ly&#x2F;explainer" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;tarjim.ly&#x2F;explainer</a>
======
confounded
Nice work!

I’m sure you’ve thought of this, but, given that Facebook’s Messenger is
generally not end-to-end encrypted, is it a good choice for discussing legal
matters? Are you considering alternatives?

~~~
atifjaved
The conversations are actually anonymous between translator and refugee/aid
worker. All we provide is their first name (so it's clear they're talking to a
person instead of the application). So there is no way for the two parties to
know anything about each other except what they willingly provide (no full
names, no locations, no phone numbers - we actually route calls through our
own Tarjimly operated numbers).

Most of the lawyers using Tarjimly censor the PII (personal identifying
information) themselves either by covering those parts of documents or
omitting them in conversations, which does the trick most of the time.
Generally, these nonprofit lawyers are so strained for resources they're
excited to use something over nothing to help them do their job.

We wanted to get something available quickly, which is why we started with
Messenger and that's made on-boarding incredibly easy, but security is proving
to be more and more important. We're going to see if the WhatsApp API will be
end-to-end encrypted and we're in the design phase of our own mobile app to
create an even better experience (especially for calling where Messenger is
being difficult).

------
Cenk
Congrats on your launch! The website looks very impressive, and I hope it goes
well for you. Will you be adding support for any other messenger apps (for
example, WhatsApp)?

~~~
atifjaved
Thanks! We're actually in touch with the WhatsApp team and they like what
we're doing - we're working with them to be able to access their API, but it
is still in the early stages. We're envisioning interesting scenarios for
creating translation groups using WhatsApp and leveraging their end-to-end
encryption to enhance privacy.

Almost every refugee we met has WhatsApp and they use it much more profusely
than Messenger, especially for groups. The one exception being Farsi speakers
who live primarily in Telegram. They all use Messaging apps as a lifeline to
their families back home and an outlet to the wider world, so they're almost
all willing to buy data plans and get a smartphone.

~~~
Cenk
Okay, that is good to hear – Excited to see where this will end up going! Do
you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?

~~~
atifjaved
Thanks! Yes it's at the bottom of our website where you can add your email to
our newsletter: [https://tarjim.ly](https://tarjim.ly)

------
gupir
Congrats on the launch. It seems you put a lot of work on this and it is
refreshing how much of impact it could have. Except for Facebook Messenger, I
would love to try. I am sure you are thinking about other messengers. I
suggest putting some kind of newsletter on your website.

Edit: ops, now I saw the newsletter box at the end of the website.

~~~
atifjaved
Thanks! Curious, what's the specific concern with Facebook Messenger? The two
I've gotten most is either "I'm not on FB" or "I don't trust FB".

Definitely looking into WhatsApp, Telegram, and especially our own mobile app
where we can do a lot more.

We have an email signup at the bottom of the site, where you can signup for
our newsletter - perhaps I should make that more visible.

~~~
ohtwenty
Personally, privacy—both from the person on the other end of the line and from
Facebook. This project reminds me a lot of 'be my eyes'[0] which is basically
what you're doing but with blind people. Have you considered contacting them
to see how they solve similar issues? What about something like
riot.im/matrix?

0-[https://www.bemyeyes.com/](https://www.bemyeyes.com/)

------
zshehri
Can't express how much I loved the idea! Good job.

Have you considered using other platforms that are widely used in the region,
such as Telegram?

------
mdolon
This is awesome! I have friends who regularly volunteer at refugee camps and
I'm sure they'd love this. Being fluent in more than one language,
volunteering abroad is something I've also wanted to do but haven't committed
to because of time constraints. Thanks for making that a bit more accessible
to folks like me (and for sharing your findings in your blog, that was an
insightful read).

~~~
atifjaved
Wow that's the exact persona we were envisioning when we created it! :)

Aziz and I felt the same way, and we felt bad about buying flights to
basically go translate (because we're engineers there wasn't much else we
could offer really).

You should definitely sign up as a translator and connect us to your friends
who were at the refugee camps when you get a chance: atif@tarjim.ly

------
vning93
Congrats on the launch guys! Been following you guys for a while now and this
is a really awesome initiative.

~~~
atifjaved
Thank you! It's crazy to look back and see where we were 1 year ago haha

------
justin--sane
The German localization of the website really needs some corrections.

~~~
atifjaved
I'm actually having some friends go through making corrections in the next few
days since not everyone on our team speaks every language - Burmese is rough!

We built a message editor which allows us to immediately edit any string in
our application and website. It also allows our friends to correct and verify
all the strings used in our application:

[https://drive.google.com/open?id=160ZFXDpddf8VHHgnYulvbzdnWb...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=160ZFXDpddf8VHHgnYulvbzdnWbrylqml)

------
ZodiacFR
very nice idea and great work , long live Tarjimly!

