The Pocketalk is another step towards Star Trek’s ‘universal translator’

Pocketalk                                                                                       £265, pocketalk.net 

Rating:

One of my fondest holiday memories is of my mother attempting to mime that she wanted a repair kit for an inflatable mattress, via a series of increasingly obscene-looking gestures, while the French people in the shop convulsed with laughter.

It’s easy to forget just how bad communication barriers could actually be before we all started carrying phones with Google Translate a few clicks away.

The Pocketalk translator is another step towards Star Trek’s ‘universal translator’: you talk while holding down a button, and it comes out of the gizmo’s speaker in 74 languages, from German to Hmong.

The Pocketalk translator is another step towards Star Trek ’s ‘universal translator’: you talk while holding down a button, and it comes out of the gizmo’s speaker in 74 languages

There are plenty of voice-translation apps, but the simplicity of Pocketalk is hard to beat: it’s got two buttons on either side, and you simply select a language for each.

You can easily hold a two-way conversation, passing the gadget back and forth between you.

Pocketalk requires an internet connection to work (the heavy lifting of the translation is done online, otherwise the thing would be the size of a paving slab), but comes with a global sim card and two years of data as part of the price.

It’s accurate, lasts for about seven hours in use – and can even be strung around your neck to go for the classic ‘I’m a tourist’ look.

Very useful indeed. Or, as they say in Bulgarian: ‘Mnogo polezno.’