Creole Apps for Smart Phones

The Quick Version

• Tradui is a Creole-English dictionary
• Byki has a Haitian French learning app
• Both are free
• I tested them both (on iPhone) in Airplane mode (i.e. no data, wi-fi or voice connections) and they both work fine offline.

Tradui

First up is Tradui, created by Intridea as part of Crisis Camp DC, and is based on the HaitiSurf Creole to English dictionary.

Free download: iPhone or Android

After the splash screen, you can type in a word to translate it from English to Creole, or vice-versa:

Tradui: Searching for food

It doesn’t handle phrases exactly, but you can search for multiple words at the same time:

Tradui: Searching for food

It does seem to be missing a few key words, like clinic:

Tradui: No clinic

Makes me wonder: Is there a list somewhere with the 500 words aid workers are most likely to need that could form the basis for future efforts?

The app also has lists of Creole and English words, broken into folders by first letter:

Tradui: The letter C

There’s a lot of words, which may require a lot of scrolling, and as you can see from the example above, there are some quirks with sort order. The translation screen is much quicker.

I don’t know any Creole, so I can’t make any claims about the accuracy of the translations.

Haitian Creole from Byki

The other iPhone app I tried was Byki’s Haitian Creole edition of its language learning system. This uses ‘lists’ of ‘flash cards’ to
present and then quiz you on different elements of language, similar to a lot of travel language apps.

Byki: List of Lists

Byki: Excuse Me

It could be a useful way to learn before you go, pass the time waiting at airports and on planes, or while waiting at meeting points.

It also has a search feature, which will find appearances of words across cards and lists:

Byki: Water

Though it has some similar gaps to Tradui:

Byki: No clinic

This system is also available for Mac/PC and on the web.

The same caveat applies: I don’t know how accurate the Creole-English translations are.

If you do know Creole, please contact us, and we can pick a few random phrases to test, and report back. Or if you have used these apps, let us know and we’ll update this entry.

Post-Quake Smart Phone Use in Haiti?

At this point, we know of one person who effectively used an iPhone during the Haiti earthquake, but it remains an open question how many responders have them, what the service is like, what it costs, etc.

If you’re an aid worker in the field, do you have an iPhone or Android phone with you? How are you using it? What kinds of apps do you need?

Add a comment or send us an email.

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