In the not too distant future, technological advances will mean we won’t need to be able to speak another language to communicate internationally. This is perhaps an overstatement. However clever translation technology gets, human beings will still need to learn each other’s national tongues if we are to truly converse with people from other countries.

But advances in both software and hardware are giving us reasonable shortcuts for interpretation. The trouble is that instant viewfinder translators, glasses and even mobile apps capable of interpreting foreign scripts, have largely failed to make it past the prototype stage.

With Arabic and English reading and conversational skills never far from popular discussion in the Gulf, we need to now consider whether the latest software applications dedicated to translation can really make a difference.

Producing really functional translation apps is not a simple task. The idiomatic nuances of individual dialects are made even more complex when we start to bring in accents or different styles of pronunciation and speech. These apps rely on intelligent analytics and back end databases that word-crunch their way through thousands of terms and expressions. Yet they still fail to deal with real world interactions as would a person. Artificial intelligence has, thankfully in many ways, got an awfully long way to go yet.

Google Translate

Google’s Translate application is part of the search giant’s wider efforts to form an ever more Internet connected world. Probably the number one translation app available today, this free app can be used direct from the web at http://translate.google.com/ or downloaded to various platforms including Android and Apple iPad from the app stores. Some versions allow language pack download so that users can still translate on the go when away from a web connection. Arabic language support features in all versions we tested along with around 60 other languages. You can even speak to the device in your native language and have the result read back to you by the computer’s voice. It’s a great app, but do remember that translations will often be close approximations.

Navita Translator

BlackBerry owners may want to try Navita Translator, currently ranked as the number one free app on this device’s store at the time of writing. Also available on Android, there is something truly wondrous about getting a device as small as a smartphone to speak a translated phrase straight back to you. The app translates words, phrases and whole sentences between different languages using Google’s language translation service with an option to switch to Microsoft’s Bing service if you prefer. It can even detect your source language. Whether you want to learn a foreign language, freshen up your international relations skills or just use it for travelling abroad, this is a fun app to play with. Users will find Arabic, Urdu and Hindi all supported — but unfortunately you will find Macedonian before Malayalam featured here.

Jibbigo

There are plenty of paid-for apps in this space and many of these will tend to come with language packs as an automatic feature rather than an additional option. Jibbigo is an example of a translation app with an offline database of what is claimed to be over 40,000 words that you can access without an Internet connection. With an adaptive voice-recognition system that will “learn” the way you speak, this is one for iPhone users to try out but it is also available on Android. A non-Gulf version of Arabic dialect is available that should be fully comprehensible for what is essentially a voice-to-voice translation app. It will only cost you a modest handful of dirhams or dollars depending on how you like to pay for you apps, but there are other free options to check out as well.

Despite the depth and breadth of Google, Microsoft and other firm’s technologies in the translation space, the jury is still out on how to best tackle this app development challenge. Whichever mobile or desktop device you use, you will generally see anywhere up to a dozen different app download options.

Your best route is to read other user experience opinions before you download. But if you’re not that hung up on accurate verb conjugation rules and you just want to be able to ask your way to the train station in Spanish, then go for any of the above and smile as you speak. As they say in Madrid… Dónde está la estación de tren, por favor?

Adrian Bridgwater is a freelance journalist who specialises in software applications, gadgets and games