ElaN Languages is an effective, yet relatively unknown, online translation tool. They are dwarfed by the big guys like Google Translate and even Bing Translator. That’s why ElaN asked us to creatively demonstrate the exceptional performance of its product in way that would be spread to many people, convincing them to try ElaN for the first time. So we decided to go head to head with the competition in a little translation experiment, on the most important day of people’s lives. We documented the experiment in a video. A video that was published only online.

Because ElaN is an online service, that’s where we wanted to deliver our message — putting viewers just one click away from testing the product themselves.

In this film we compare ElaN Languages with Google Translate. And who relies on online translation tools more than someone who speaks a different language than the love of their life? So we found engaged couples that come from different nationalities, and use (sometimes broken) English as their common language.

We asked them to write their wedding vows in their native tongue — the language in which they feel the most comfortable expressing themselves. The couples ran their wedding vows through both online translation tools, and red the results in English at their actual ceremonies. The translations were derived from Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, Dutch and Norwegian. The results of Google made for some whacky declarations. Then we hear the translated vows using ElaN, which led to very touching, romantic vows, proving that when it comes to online translation tools, bigger isn’t always better.

We searched for international couples who were already planning their weddings. Then in exchange for professional video footage of their wedding, they played along with our little test when they spoke their vows.

We filmed three separate weddings, and cut them together into a 2-minute online film. The short video was shared online via ElaN’s platforms and spread viraly through Facebook, Twitter, and email shares.