Our world has become smaller today as we work more and more with people across the globe. Advances in technology in the past 15 years has made it easier for us to communicate with people in different parts of the world. Though many do speak English around the world, we are also communicating with people who may speak a different language. As we travel to different countries, we will information presented in different languages as well as people who may speak a different language.

To help with translations, there are now several applications that can take work, phrases, sentences, or complete documents and translate them. One of the more popular applications is Google Translate. It is available through a standard web browser as well as on iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.

To translate, you can enter the text you want to translate and select the original language (there is also an auto-detect feature) and the language to be translated to. Google Translate also has a feature that will read the text in the selected language. I tried it recently when sending messages to family in Latvia as well as a recent trip to Spain. While the translations are not always perfect, it is still pretty accurate.

If you have used a translation tool that you like, please let me know.