A few weeks ago Google released a tool that provides voice translation into several languages for free. This is a major breakthrough in democratizing voice translation technology that could bring us to an era where knowledge of foreign languages looses its importance. This is a bold statement, but I think it will happen in a few decades or maybe years. Nowadays fluency in several languages is important for several reasons including applying for a job, communicating with foreigners, travelling, education (especially for countries that don't publish enough books in their own language), accessing the internet and online resources and much more. In exception of some businesses and institutions that depend of high quality formal translations the wording required to understand a foreign text is relatively small. Most humans are not very dependent on high quality translations. For example, a tourist doesn't need to master the language of the country he's visiting, nor does an ...