A foreign passenger speaks to a service employee at the multilingual intelligent customer service counter at Metro Line 11's Airport Station. Courtesy of Shenzhen Metro Group
The Shenzhen Metro Group recently launched a multilingual intelligent customer service counter at Metro Line 11's Airport Station, providing real-time translation, ticket purchase inquiries, and travel planning for foreign visitors.
This terminal, the first of the kind in China, features real-time visual translation, a double-sided transparent screen display, and intelligent consultation.
With the innovative design, passengers simply face the screen, select their desired language, and start asking questions. Foreign passengers do not need to adjust their language style or use specific sentence structures. On the other side of the screen, the questions are presented to the service employee in Chinese. The employees can reply in Chinese, and their speech is translated into the selected language and displayed on the screen for the foreign passenger.
According to the operator, the system currently supports more than 10 languages and dialects such as Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Russian, and German, as well as the Cantonese dialect.
The Shenzhen Metro Group said that the customer service counter is based on a smart customer service model that integrates advanced technologies such as real-time translation and multi-modal recognition. It also employs advanced noise reduction technology, enabling precise voice recognition and translation in noisy environments.
The double-sided transparent screen design maintains the warmth of face-to-face communication while ensuring accurate communication by displaying real-time translated subtitles.
At the end of April, Shenzhen Metro installed point-of-sale (POS) terminals at eight major stations, including Luohu Station, Huanggang Checkpoint Station, Wenjin Station, Airport Station, Futian Station, and Shenzhen North Station. These terminals allow international travelers and foreign residents to pay with their bank cards. The POS system supports major foreign bank cards, including VISA, MasterCard, Discover Card, American Express, Diners Club, and JCB. It also allows foreign visitors to pay with digital yuan using the digital RMB app's "soft wallet" at all stations.