I can communicate moderately well in the Romantic Languages
However, I am planning a trip to Egypt, Turkey and Morroco.
I liked to get away from the beaten track and communicate with people in their native language.
With the proliferation of AI today, I wondered if anyone could recommend a good/excellent electronic, verbal-recognition device-- either an app for your cellphone or a stand-alone pocket device?
Posted by
Freedonia
16270 posts
Have you tried Google Translate on your smartphone? It offers two way translation.
Posted by
Los Angeles
4853 posts
the other cool thing about Google Translate is you point the camera at something written and ... translation!
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32350 posts
In my experience, Google Translate works reasonably well for short and simple translations, but it's not perfect. In some cases you may need a data connection on your smartphone, although I believe some languages can be downloaded for "off line" operation. I've tried it with Italian, French and German and native speakers have told me that in some cases the translation is reasonably close and gets the meaning across, but in other cases it's completely wrong.
Two of the countries you'll be visiting are primarily Arabic-speaking. You didn't say which type of smartphone you use, but you may find this helpful - https://www.androidauthority.com/best-english-to-arabic-dictionaries-888398/ . Most (if not all) of these are probably also available for iOS but I didn't check. You'll probably find that many of the people you'll be interacting with as a tourist, can probably speak English to some extent.
Posted by
Uppsala, Sweden
6970 posts
Assuming you mean the Romance languages, French is widely spoken in Morocco.