NEC has developed an automatic translator for cell phones, able to translate any spoken Japanese phrase into English when spoken into a phone. Featuring a dictionary of 500,000 words, it should make traveling and communicating with anglophiles much easier for the Japanese.

Now they just need to make it work for other languages, such as, well, English into anything. I know that I'd love to be able to travel and not worry about the language barrier. That way I won't have to try to mime "I would like to purchase a turkey sandwich with thinly sliced cheese on toasted bread, please," which is really hard to get across with just your hands.

Via Akihabara News