Google Translate

Google Translate covers a very wide range of languages and works on text, documents, websites, speech and the camera, which can translate a sign or a menu on screen as you point at it. The phone app can download language packs so it keeps working without a data connection, which is often the deciding feature on the road.

For travel writers it is a field tool: reading signs and menus, getting the gist of a local news article, or holding a basic conversation through the conversation mode. Developers can reach the same engine through Google Cloud's translation API.

Quality varies by language pair. Use it to understand, not to publish: check spellings of place names against local sources, and ask a native speaker before quoting a translated phrase in an article.