Inspiration
Our inspiration for this idea is based off the award. We saw a fun opportunity in the meme categories and took the opportunity to base our project off of it. At first we wanted to make an website that gives bad dating advice, however, it seemed too odd for a hackathon. Next, we brainstormed and found the idea of a brain rot translator. One that will scavenge the internet for content and slang then use the information to transform one sentence into another sentence with slang.
What it does
Our AI translator, AlphaLingo, is used to convert sentences into ones with slang of a certain generation. AlphaLingo is able to convert sentence into boomer, millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha. This will allow different generations to communicate better with each other. Our AI also includes text to speech and oral understanding, allowing one to translate material on the go.
How we built it
We built this project in 2 parts, front end and back end. Our 2 teams coordinated so we were able to work on both ends at the same time. For the front end, we used HTML to create the site data and all the UI, and Canva to create the visuals and the general layout of the webpage. Additionally, we tried to mimic the Google Translate UI with a twist. The back end of AlphaLingo is comprised of Genai in the form of Gemini 2.5 flash. We used the free version of the AI so we were limited when using AI. In an attempt to raise our cap, we used 2 APIs on 2 different account, this ended up being successful. We watched many tutorials and attend lectures in the building in order to create the best product we possibly can. Then we used Flask to connected them both to create the final product, of AlphaLingo.
Challenges we ran into
When we went into this hackathon, we didn't know much. Our first challenge was finding a topic for us to base our project on. We ended up choosing a AI based mutigenerational language generator. Our next challenge was having to learn many of the tools we used from minimal experience. We did out best to learn and work on the product at the same time, managing to haphazardly get everything working in the end. Communication between frontend and backend took the longest, with this being the area we have the least experience in, and the API requests to Gemini having a large delay, dealing with this ended taking over 40% of out time working on this project.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
Walking into this Hackathon we didn't know what we were doing. 3/4 of us didn't even have python installed. Going though the 36 hours has been a very bumpy road, from the lack of sleep, to the unsolvable errors, and the infinitely long lines for food, especially on day 1. When we started working, we did not know what we were doing, we were learning new things even step we took. We spent most of our time learning and debugging, rather than designing or consulting, significantly more than we spent sleeping. In the end we created a project that we are very proud of, the AlphaLingo. A platform that can translate English from different generations and add slang into it. Not only are we proud of the project we built, we are also proud of how much we learned in a 36 hour session, the designing, coding, and most of all teamwork.
What we learned
Throughout this project, we not only learned how to language and slang changes across generations, but also improved out technical skills. We attended workshops on GitHub and Copilot, which helped us learn how to collaborate effectively, manage version control, and use AI assisted coding. We gained experience coding in Python and HTML, integrating AI models to translate text, and applying what we learned in real time.
What's next for AlphaLingo
In the future, we aim to expand our translator with support for more languages, regional slang variations (like the Torontonian accent), and AI driven personalization that adapts to a user's tone and context. We envision it becoming a go to tool for cross generational communication, education, and even content creation.
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