Written on 11^th January 2018

Air New Zealand explores translation technology

Air New Zealand is turning to technology to tackle the language barriers that often arise during travel.

The airline is one of the first corporates globally to trial a customer service use case for Google’s wireless Bluetooth Pixel Buds headphones which enable live translation of 40 languages via Google’s Pixel handset.

Air New Zealand Chief Digital Officer Avi Golan says the airline has a number of multi-lingual employees but naturally there are times when the relevant language speaker may not be on hand and technology could play a pivotal role in those moments.

Air New Zealand has an aspiration to be a leading digital airline.  It’s experimentation with Google Pixel Buds follows on from other initiatives this year involving Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality and Social Robotics.

Source: Air New Zealand