The nation’s capital attracts visitors and immigrants from around the world, thus so does the nation’s subway system.
Metro said Friday it has ramped up its translations of its web pages, with new real human translations to help those riders navigate the system’s online offerings.
In the past, the agency had used machine translations but the agency “heard from people with limited English proficiency that some of the machine translations were awkward, and at times misrepresented names and idiomatic expressions.”
The website now has human translations for Spanish, French, Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese, the region’s five most frequently spoken languages besides English.
The agency has links to its “Pocket Guide” brochure in 11 languages: English, Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Spanish and Vietnamese.
Metro also has instructional videos in Korean, Spanish and Vietnamese on how to ride the system.
But not everything includes a human touch. If riders click onto a link going beyond basic ridership information, they get a warning that they are crossing over into the land of machines.
