We will not have a technological Babel fish until we have portable (power-efficient) computers that are both 1. roughly as or more intelligent as a human and 2. understands the world in the same way as a human, including both semantics and pragmatics of such things as humor.<p>This is not anything realistic in anything like the near term. Most of the automated translation software I&#x27;ve used can&#x27;t even handle something like deixis through a text between two such well-studied and similar languages as English and Spanish. You&#x27;re talking about a device that could translate between Scots, Tamil, and Huasteca Nahuatl. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=sAz_UvnUeuU</a>