A non-profit organization called Before Babel Bridge (BBB) is offering a helping hand to overcome language difficulties during the upcoming Asian Games by launching a mobile app that could assist foreign visitors having trouble communicating.

The app offers free translation services from Indonesian into eight different languages, namely English, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Russian, Vietnamese and Thai. The backbone of the app will be more than 500 standby volunteer language assistants. Anyone can reach the service by downloading the mobile app from Google Play Store and then choosing their language.

Then whenever they need help, they can ask for one of the assistants, who are mostly Indonesian.

“Our focus is tackling the language barrier,” the president of BBB South Korea, Kim in-Chul, told The Jakarta Post after the launch of the project on Wednesday.

He added that foreigners might need help when interacting with taxi drivers or understanding instructions from a police officer.

The volunteer language assistants are similar to the volunteers being trained by the Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee (INASGOC), but the INASGOC volunteers will only focus on foreigners inside the venues. Helping confused foreigners outside Asian Games venues is therefore not their responsibility.

The INASGOC volunteers will, for example, help athletes during the events, post on social media and help “accredited” officials such as VIP guests, juries and members of the media.

INASGOC has allocated 11,000 volunteers in Jakarta and 2,000 in Palembang.

Around 170,000 foreign visitors are targeted to attend the Asian Games, which lasts for 18 days starting from Aug. 18, according to the Tourism Ministry. Of this number, 150,000 will be foreign spectators, 10,000 athletes, 5,000 officials and 5,000 journalists and photographers.

BBB checks each of its volunteers thoroughly to ensure safety for users. Selection includes an identity check, in addition to a language proficiency test, said Saiful, a staff member of BBB Indonesia.

“We also tell our volunteers to only answer reasonable questions,” Saiful said, adding that this was done to protect BBB volunteers. Volunteers are also told not to give their personal information such as phone number.

BBB volunteers are mostly students, though there are also members of academia who love inter-cultural communication.

Korean language lecturer Kwon Young Sun is among the BBB volunteers. She said she decided to join BBB as a volunteer because she liked language and wanted to help others to overcome the language barrier. She said she did not receive any money from volunteering.

“After all, it will not take my time. It will take at most five minutes [to respond to a user],” said Sun, who has been a lecturer at the National University (Unas) in Jakarta for seven years.

“I can respond to calls from my house,” added Sun, who chose to be a volunteer for Korean.

Similar to Sun, 20-year-old Muhammad Farhan Akbar, decided to volunteer with BBB because he loves talking to people from different cultures.

“I am learning Korean at the moment, so I hope I can help Korean visitors and practice my language,” said Muhammad Akbar, who is a student of International Relations at Unas.

The BBB mobile app interface is simple. It is now online. However, the Post made three attempts to contact volunteers in English but none of the attempts succeeded. BBB was established in 2002 and first provided language volunteers during the 2002 World Cup in South Korea’s capital, Seoul.

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