Babel Chat

A chat app where you can speak multiple languages without even knowing it!

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Inspiration

The idea sprung to mind when I saw my friends from China at the University, frustrated by translating sentences of any texts they received using a dictionary app to better understand the context.

What it does

It is a chat app which lets you send and receive messages in your native language, which can then be translated to the native languages of the recipients irrespective of what language they are using.

How we built it

We created a front end using Angular for the web app hosted on firebase, the Android app was created using Flutter. Both of these front ends call a Java API which utilises the Google Cloud Translate API to translate each message.

Challenges we ran into

We had to improve the speed of translation as we were translating each message individually into each target language. This was a problem because messages were not being translated in real time.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We have now improved this to translate to each supported language in real time. This application is now pretty much ready for real-world use.

What we learned

How to deploy a Java API on Azure. Host an Angular app on Firebase with a real-time database. How to connect a Flutter Android application to Firebase.

What's next for Babel Chat

  • Support more languages
  • Improve security
  • Improve email invitation to link directly to chat
  • Support other mobile operating systems
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