Converse is the name of a new application which is claimed to turn your iPhone into a double ended language translator, a multilingual, face-to-face instant messaging conversation. It works with both people able to type on a keyboard in their own language at the same time and have the words translated and displayed for the other person.

 

If it works as advertised, Converse is set to significantly reduce communication problems on holidays and business trips. The new app enables an English speaker to communicate with people in 51 different languages and keyboards accommodate non-Latin languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Thai, Czech, Hebrew and Ukrainian scripts.

You can ask a question by simply typing it in, just like a text message or email. The text is then immediately translated into your chosen language and displayed on the other end of the screen. The person can then respond to the question in their language in exactly the same way and their response is translated, then displayed to you in the Queen's English.

Web translation, is very much hit and miss but with a price of just GBP 1.79, it may be simply too good to pass up.

Languages included Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Belarusian, Bulgarian,Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Filipino, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Maltese, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Welsh and Yiddish.