While in Taiwan earlier this month, my father tried in vain to explain in pantomime that he wanted whatever available tea might help with his kidney stones. I pulled up AltaVista’s Babelfish on my cell phone and had it translate “kidney” into Chinese characters. The young Taiwanese teen sold us what appeared to be a very large bag of hash, but he pointed to his sides while doing so, and thus, we assumed, understood.
A group called Flickr hacks has developed something of a universal translator that would have helped in such a situation, wherein you type what you want to do, find, say or eat and a series of relevant photos are conveniently returned to you. The “Visual Dictionary,” as they call it, is the perfect way to use you web-capable cell phone, especially while traveling overseas, or to the Deep South.
Visual Dictionary [F20 via MAKEblog]
