Moving abroad and navigating your way around doesn’t have to be so daunting when you’ve got access to a wealth of information in the palm of your hand – your mobile phone! With the help of a few apps that we’d class as travel essentials, you’re guaranteed to feel more at ease as you explore the unfamiliar.
Whether it’s how you manage your finances while you’re away from home, if you need instant clarification when faced with a language barrier, or simply just need pointed in the right direction, there are apps designed to help you do just that.
When you qualify to Teach English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) you can travel all over the world while getting paid! Picking up your life and moving it to another country is enough stress for anyone. Below are a few apps that can help alleviate some of that inevitable moving stress by making your day to day life abroad that little bit more straight-forward.
Finances
Keeping a close eye on your finances from the moment you set off will be essential to managing your money effectively. With the help of certain apps, you can do just that.
Revolut
Revolut is a remote international banking app. An account can be set up for free in minutes, all you have to pay for is the debit card itself. Its main perks include being able to exchange money for free, fee-free international bank transfers, as well as the option to store multiple currencies in your account at one time.
It’s easy to keep track of your spending too, with an option to receive instant spending notifications, as well as the option to disable the card at any time if lost or stolen.
Monzo
Monzo is similar to Revolut in that it offers a highly efficient banking app. However, it doesn’t allow you to store multiple currencies at a time. But unlike Revolut, it does allow you to have an overdraft and savings account.
Plum
With a little help from Plum you could find yourself regularly topping up your savings without even noticing. Using AI, Plum learns your spending habits by monitoring your typical income and expenditure. It uses this information to calculate what you can afford to save before transferring small amounts of money into your savings every few days. You’ll be amazed how much you can save up in a short period of time.
Teachers deserve to treat themselves once in a while, and the savings you could make with Plum may just help you take that well-deserved break.
Language
Overcoming language barriers has never been easier thanks to the development of countless translation apps. Whether you need a helping hand learning a new language or instant translation assistance, fear not – with a simple search on your phone your problems can be solved.
Google Translate
Google Translate is easily the most popular translation app. With the option to easily translate to and from over 100 languages, conduct offline translations, and its ability to interpret speech and text within images, it’s popularity is understandable!
However, don’t solely rely on Google Translate for all your translation queries. It can be great for capturing the gist of things and for quick, short translations but it is unfortunately prone to the odd error. It struggles with ambiguity, meaning that you can’t insert entire pages of text and expect perfect results. It’s easy to use but can be difficult to spot errors when you don’t have any prior knowledge of the language you’re translating.
WordReference
WordReference is a fantastic, free, dictionary-style translating app. It tackles the ambiguous nature of translating languages by providing multiple meanings of a word and examples of the contexts you might find it in. It also provides you with verb conjugations in all the tenses – anyone learning a language knows how tricky getting to grips with them can be!
Unlike Google Translate, only individual words can be translated rather than phrases and blocks of text. However, it features an active language forum where you’ll likely find others who have similar queries.
However, WordReference only deals with a few languages, including French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese.
Transport
Public transport can be pretty difficult to get your head around if you’re both overcoming a language barrier, and aren’t used to it. Thankfully there are plenty of apps available to calculate routes on your behalf.
Citymapper
Citymapper is a highly functional travel app that helps users find the most practical transport routes. The app operates in 39 major cities around the world – and counting.
It uses GPS to locate your closest public transport links. Citymapper also takes a number of things into consideration in order to give you accurate journey times, whether that’s by foot, bus, cycling or the underground.
Keeping you in the loop with departures and arrivals, as well as live in-app updates about delays and time changes makes for a very convenient, must-have travel app.
Local transport apps
Wherever TEFL takes you, it’s worth finding out if the local transport system you’ll be frequenting has an app. As local travel apps focus on a particular area, they could provide the best, most accurate information for planning journeys.
These are just a few of the many great travel apps out there. Trust us, there are many! The more you acquaint yourself with apps like these, the easier the move you’re about to make will be.