Earlier this year, Microsoft demonstrated a flying-car-esque new technology that enables “real time cross lingual conversations.” (Translation: “Having a conversation with someone who speaks another language.”) The demo, featuring a product Microsoft will release later this year called Skype Translate, was impressive:

For some business owners and managers, new opportunities or marketplace changes can lead to the development of a network of key suppliers, workers or customers who speak another language. Soon you find yourself in a place where learning to “converse cross lingually” has stopped being one of those “nice to know things” and has become one of those critical “have to know things.” Tools like Skype Translate, while not as good as speaking a second language, are certainly better than the approach I often resort to when I find myself in such a circumstance: Make hand gestures and talk louder.

Until Microsoft and other companies crack the cross lingual conversation challenge, we’re stuck with using the existing translation apps that are an improvement over paperback translation dictionaries, popular primarily with college students on a summer backpack tour of Europe.

According to Lifehacker.com, here the best language translation tools currently available.

trans-tools-logs

Google Translate

Definitely the best known and most used, its pluses (all of these have plenty of minuses, so we’ll skip those) include Chrome browser integration features that make it easy to translate seamlessly on any web page your land one. On Android devices, Google Translate is a feature of many apps.

Bing Translator

Microsoft’s Bing Translator is a product created by the same folks at Microsoft who are working on the Skype Translator so “watch this space.” It’s embedded in the Window Phone and has early “not quite real time” cross-lingual conversation features.

Linguee

Linguee isn’t actually a translation tool, rather it is a super-charged replacement for the dog-eared paperback translation dictionary.

WordLens

WordLens, recently acquired by Google, is what might be described as an augmented realty tool in that you can point your smartphone’s camera at a menu or newspaper headline or a road sign in Paris that says Arret and it will automagically display the word Stop. (It works with Google Glass if you are brave enough to wear the device in a foreign country.)

Do you have a favorite translation tool for when a human translator isn’t available? Share your experience in the comments below.

(via: Lifehacker.com)

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