One of the highest rated Thai phrasebook apps on the Play Store

Available now for Android (iOS coming soon)

A relative newcomer to the market, but already 15,000+ downloads, listed top 10 in searches and joint top 3 highest rated among all Thai phrasebook apps at 4.7 (150+ ratings).

I created Thai Talk mainly because Google Translate is not very good at translating Thai. It’s the only app on the market with all these features:

• High quality speech with NO internet connection required
• Common tourist attractions and useful places categorised by town/area
• Local emergency and other useful phone numbers dailable from the app
• Translations displayed with both Thai script and ‘karaoke’ pronunciation guide
• Bookmark favourite translations
• Instant search results that update as you type
• Search in English OR Thai
• Voice search (hardware permitting)
• Alphabetised English-to-Thai AND Thai-to-English dictionaries
• ‘Slang’ section. Few apps bother to include any useful slang phrases
• ‘Isaan dialect’ section. Isaan dialect is rather common in Thailand, so it’s useful to know a little
• Copy translations to clipboard for messaging, Facebook, etc
• Nearly 2000 words and phrases with new phrases added regularly

Also, the app needs NO special permissions, has NO ads, NO in-app purchases and is the cheapest of any comparable app. Don’t go to Thailand without this app.

I created the video above to demonstrate the app’s features. And, because some users weren’t sure how to get Offline Speech Recognition working on their phone, I created a little video to show how to do that:I also created some rather successful Facebook ads to promote it. Although I lost interest in promoting the app more recently, the Facebook page has over 3000 likes and followers. Here are a couple of those ads:

The romance angle

Though not a dating app, I included a ‘romance’ category of translations and wanted to capture the hearts of those western guys, looking for a Thai partner, but struggling with the language barrier. I targeted this ad to males from several English speaking countries (as well as countries where English is a popular second language) interested in Thailand, between 18-60 years old. Result: ~1000 likes and ~500 new app downloads in 3 days for about $50.

Getting the locals to push the app

The ad above says, in Thai “Does your western boyfriend not understand you? Tell him to get this app”. I wanted locals pushing the app to their western partners. I targeted the ad to Thai females interested in travel or football (Thai women with western boyfriends often express an interest in football) between 18-40 years old. Result: ~2000 likes and ~500 new app downloads in 5 days for about $40.

I’d welcome your feedback or suggestions about the app. Maintenance, additions and checking of Thai translations is handled by new spikything employee Napassorn Honghirun.