When you don’t know the language in a foreign country, trying to read a menu or talk to a local can be a confusing, frustrating experience.
Language phrasebooks can only go so far when you need to make yourself understood in a hurry. But the good news is that there is an app that can make your travel safer, more connected and enriching ― and it’s free to use.
Take what happened to me recently. More than any other item I brought on my Italian vacation in the Dolomites, it was the Google Translate app that I used the most every day. This became the MVP of my trip. This app, available for iOS and Android devices and capable of translating up to 249 languages, was my go-to for making myself understood when my hands and broken Italian couldn’t.
When my friend and I got caught in an afternoon hailstorm, we used Google Translate to share our predicament with a nearby Italian farmer, and he gave us a ride back to our rifugio a mile away. When the museums and menus had no English translations, I pointed my camera, and the app’s text-recognition features could quickly translate the images for us to understand the art and food we were viewing.
I do not consider myself particularly tech-savvy, and I was impressed by how easy and intuitive this app is to use without needing internet connectivity or a linguistics degree. I now consider this app as essential to have as sunscreen and an adapter while going on vacation.
