Every day, we translate more than 100 billion words a day across 103 different languages. Despite this massive scale, Google Translate quality varies amongst languages, and some language pairs like Arabic and German, are particularly challenging for computers to crack. To improve the quality of Arabic translatios, we needed people and computers to join forces.

We launched a Translate Community campaign that invited people around the world to complete simple translations on Google. These crowdsourced translations help train our machines, leading to improved Arabic translation quality and a better mobile app experience for refugees and air workers. We set an ambitious goal of two million contributions for the community to rally behind.

To raise awareness of this effort on a global scale, we launched three videos inviting people to participate in English, German and Arabic. We amplified this message with owned and earned media via targeted social posts, YouTube mastheads, and homepage promos on Google.com. This integrated “toolkit” drove millions to the Translate Community to contribute translations.

The Translate for Refugees campaign not only helped to improve the product, but fostered intercultural communication and understanding. Our message spread through social and was picked up by traditional media like Germany’s biggest newspaper BILD, boosting reach and participation.

Within the first 24 hours, the initiative generated 500,000 new contributions. To date, more than 5M contributions have been made by the community around the world, far surpassing our initial goal of 2M contributions. The tangible impact of this effort is evident in improved Arabic translation, and the addition of Word Lens in Arabic used on the ground by refugees and aid workers.