If a language barrier is one of the things stopping you from travelling to Japan or China, this invention might just address your concerns.

As long as you don't mind shelling USD$200, that is.

Reminiscent of Douglas Adam's Babelfish, the ili is a handy device that can translate up to 50,000 phrases between English, Chinese, and Japanese almost instantaneously - and without wifi, too.

According to the video, French, Thai, Korean, Spanish, Italian, Arabic will be supported too.

Watch it at work here in a Tech In Asia video:

While many viewers are adequately impressed with the device, some have also expressed their skepticism at it:

Even if their skepticism is valid, we can only hope ili does what it says. This sure beats manually keying in a word/phrase and waiting for an inaccurate translation.

Here's a little known trail in Singapore you should be checking out:

This free trail lets you jalan jalan through 20th century Serangoon in 40 minutes

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