As the old saying goes, “there are only two certainties in this world; Taxes and Death”.

Now whilst this may be somewhat pessimistic, albeit true, there is also one other certainty; that times move onwards and this is highlighted perfectly by two new technological offerings for international travellers. Both Alta Vista and Paragon Software Group have just announced their latest respective releases; a Language Translation Utility and Multilingual Dictionary for the ever increasingly ubiquitous iPhone and iPod Touch.

The Alta Vista offering is the Babelingo 1.1 which has a handy lexicon of approximately 300 handy phrases and words; it is a very fast utility which allows the user to show professionally translated phrases to whomever they are trying to communicate with.

The Babelingo software translates to and from seven different languages; Chinese, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, Italian and English and displays its phrases in a large and well portrayed script that is easy to read even from some distance away. The true measure of Babelingo’s versatility though, is that the person being communicated with can use it to select one of several offered responses to the user’s original question, ensuring fast efficient communication.

Turning to the Paragon Software offering, this is a more traditional type of dictionary with English, French and Italian language options. Once again, the application is very fast yet extensive, with over 110,000 dictionary entries: there is also an audio option with over 40,000 words spoken in the previously mentioned languages as an additional aid to the user.

For those who remember former times when the only language aid available for travellers was to carry an old fashioned dictionary, it shows just how much things have changed…times certainly do move onwards.