Can I add that Google's "Babel Fish" translator will in never solve the language problem. Not only does it discriminate against anyone who cannot afford a mobile phone, but against minority language groups as well.

There are 6,800 languages worldwide, not fifty-two !

Moreover, if I met a native in Borneo, and he said to me in Hakka "I've lost my mobile phone" how would I understand him :) And how many starving Africans can afford a mobile phone !

As English loses its economic power, the answer is not for us to move to Mandarin Chinese, but to Esperanto which puts all speakers on an equal footing.

Have a look at http://www.lernu.net or http://www.esperanto.net

Looks like Microsoft is going head to head with the big G and actually might defeat him in this battlefield.
The combination of machine and human translation might be a real threat to translation services such as Tomedes ( http://www.tomedes.com )