Communicate More Easily With These Translation Apps

You’re traveling overseas this summer for the family vacation of a lifetime. Or perhaps you need to visit a foreign country for business. Dilemma is, you don’t speak the language. There’s hope, though, and you can get it from your smartphone. Tech companies today offer a wide range of translation apps for tourists and business professionals who are traveling the world. Here are some of the best of these apps for travelers who need to surmount those language barriers.

Jibbigo

Jibbigo costs $4.99, this app is available for both the iPhone and Android. It has such an extensive dictionary you would be hard pressed to find a language this app can’t translate. To use it, users speak straight into their smartphone and Jibbigo will give you a translation via text or voice. This app can be very useful to people traveling to remote locations as it does not require a network connection.

Dean Foster’s Culture Guides

These guides are a little more advanced than Jibbigo. As Burke writes, the guides are available for 12 countries so far. The apps provide users with an overview of these countries, maps, weather reports, and currency exchange rates. Of course, it also provides solid translation services.

Word Lens

Here’s an interesting app that utilizes your smartphone’s camera to translate. With this app, instead of typing in words or phrases, you can snap a photo of a street sign, menu, or brochure, and Word Lens will translate the writing for you. The app is a little limited so far in that it only contains Spanish, French, and Italian to English – and vice versa – so far. Still, it’s a neat idea. The app is free, but each language costs you $4.99.