I can't remember who said it, but someone said technology changes less in 1 year than anyone expects, but more in 10 years. Translation, however, is a tricky b

I can't remember who said it, but someone said technology changes less in 1 year than anyone expects, but more in 10 years. Translation, however, is a tricky bit. Due to the nature of the structure of language, it would have to be "say a sentence, wait, respond, wait" which would slow down the course of a conversation significantly. I think you could get to usefulness for simple transactions today if you're google or apple for a romance language in a standard accent. You would probably have to download something beforehand to preload the soundex for that set of accents, but it's within the power of your phone to do so. You'd probably need the top 3000 words + food + touristic places + top 5000 idioms in a set of common accents for the region, but that's not too bad compared to talking about something like politics. The top phones have the power to do that today.