In front of the Kyrenia Gate, in Nicosia, North Cyprus

Traveling the world is one of the things I enjoy most. I’m so glad I’ve been able to visit 10 different countries in the last 8 years, 4 of them with my children. As a native English speaker, I am kind of spoiled in having my mother tongue be the lingua franca in most places I go. But even so, there have been times when language barriers have come up for me when traveling, especially away from the big cities. Here are some tips for dealing with language barriers when traveling.

1) Learn the Language Before You Go.

Of course, this is easier said than done. Depending on how long you plan on traveling, it may be wise to invest in a course. For example, if traveling to Ethiopia, especially for an extended period of time, you might choose to do some Amharic language remote classes. There are free language learning apps as well as paid ones, though you get what you pay for. I did an Arabic course on Duolingo and even though I completed it, unfortunately, it stopped after only 2 sections, which means I am far from fluent. However, just that was able to help me communicate with some non-English speakers I met on the Turkish-controlled side of Nicosia; there was enough overlap between Turkish and Arabic that my asking where the “historic door” was enabled me to get pointed in the direction of Kyrenia Gate. (My phone was so close to dying that I couldn’t use the internet to help me out there.)

2) Learn Some Key Phrases.

Even if you don’t have enough time to learn enough of the local language to have some basic level of communication, learning some basic words and phrases in the local culture can be very helpful, it can also just be a way to connect with the locals and bring a smile to their face.

Some of the things I try to learn wherever I go are:

  • Hello/Bye
  • Yes/No
  • Thank you/ You’re welcome.
  • I don’t understand.
  • I don’t speak [language].
  • Where is…?
  • Bathroom.
  • How much does this cost?
  • Help!/Emergency!
  • Basic numbers one to ten, hundred, and thousand.
If you are allergic or sensitive to something, it would also be useful to ask “Does this contain gluten?” or similar.

3. Learn the Alphabet and Pronunciation.

Learning alphabets and how to pronounce them is pretty important if you want to be able to read street signs, and other things, because not everything is written in English. Of course, this is much easier when you are looking at a language that is similar to English, and don’t need to learn the entire alphabet from scratch. When visiting Austria, I only needed to learn one letter, ß, which is basically an S. In Poland, the alphabet itself wasn’t that different, but pronunciations really were. Like when I was talking aboht the street Jana Pawła Woronicza in Warsaw, it was important to know that it was pronounced Yana Pavla Voroneecha or the directions people were giving me would have made no sense.

Greek was harder to learn, but I put my math and physics skills to use and figured out what many of the letters said, to be able to read signs, helpful both on my trip to Crete and my three trips to Cyprus. With languages like Georgian, which do not have letters remotely similar to English, it was more challenging, but by the end of the trip I was able to identify about 1/3 of the letters I was seeing.

For languages like Korean, you might think that there is no way you can learn something like that, but I saw this cool video that taught me to read Korean in less than 10 minutes.

 

4) Google Translate is Handy

Google Translate has revolutionized my traveling. And it keeps on getting better and better. You can type what you need into Google Translate and it’ll translate what you wrote into the language of your choosing. In many languages, if you press the play button after it translates what you wrote, it will say that out loud.

So if you’re trying to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak any English, you can type into the Google Translate app and once the translation shows up, you can show it to them or play it for them. But since you likely don’t have the local keyboard on your phone for them to type back what they want to tell you, Google Translate also lets them talk into the microphone and it will transcribe what they say and translate it for you.

5) Try Conversation Mode

This is another Google Translate tip, but hey, it is good enough to take up more than one space on this list.

The Google Translate app has something called conversation mode, where you choose what languages the conversation will be in, and it translates, in real time, between the languages in the conversations. You take turn saying something, and it automatically translates it in writing on the screen, and then the person responds in another language and it translates it into your language on the screen. This takes audio input but the output is fully written.

6) Chat GPT-4o Conversation Mode

If you think Google Translate’s conversation mode is cool, then Chat GPT’s takes it out of the park. The thing is, the really cool one only works on Chat GPT-4o, the latest version, which you only get for a limited amount of time per day if you are using the free version. (The amount isn’t specified.) Plus users get more time, and Pro gets unlimited.

Basically, on the bottom right corner of the chat GPT app, you could press the microphone button. Once you press it, in advanced voice mode you’d see a blue circle. In regular mode you see a black one. advanced. In advanced voice mode do the following:

Tell Chat GPT “I will be having a conversation with someone who speaks [Spanish]. Every time I say something in English please translate it to [Spanish], and then when they say something in [Spanish] please translate it back to me in English.”

It works beautifully.

Each person in the conversation just talks like normal, and Chat GPT works as your interpreter.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t work quite that way in regular mode, though you talk to it in English and ask it how to say it in Spanish, and then ask it how to say something Spanish in English. It won’t be like a flowing conversation, but it does allow verbal input and auditory output, no reading necessary.

7) Google Lens

Trying to read a package in a store in a foreign language? What if you don’t even know what language it is written in? This happens often when looking at packaging in Europe, when there are so many different languages on labels?

Open your camera app if you have an Android phone, click on the button in the upper left hand corner, next to the flash, the one that looks like 4 corners with a dot inside it. This opens Google Lens.

Hold your phone so the camera is looking at the foreign language, then on the bottom of the app click on translate, and it will automatically detect what language you are looking at, and will show you the translation on the screen in place of the foreign language.

8) Offline Google Translate

Yes, this is the third Google Translate tip, but hey, it is a very useful app. While it is extremely helpful, you don’t always have access to the internet when you’re traveling. You can download specific language dictionaries so you can use Google Translate even when not connected to the internet, but its scope is limited. With offline Google Translate, it can’t take audio input, and it doesn’t have audio output either, it is entirely text based.

9) Young People are Key

About 8 years ago when I traveled to Poland, I stayed in the countryside, in a village on the outskirts of Lublin. Stopping at their tiny little grocery store, I tried to buy some groceries, but no one there spoke any English, and with Google Translate not being as advanced then as it is today, I wasn’t able to communicate effectively with the shop keeper. She solved the issue by calling her nephew who translated for me.

The younger generation tends to know English so much better than the previous one. While with older adults it can be hit or miss if they know English (though in Cyprus the older generations spoke English well because it was occupied by England), if you look for someone in their twenties or younger, you’re nearly guaranteed to find they speak English, both because of learning it in school, and because internet, social media, and movies all motivate and help the younger generation to learn English.

10) Don’t Forget Portable Chargers

So many of the helpful tips dealing with language barriers rely on phones and internet, and the better these things work, the more battery draining they are. Far too many times when traveling, by the end of the day my phone battery is drained enough that I keep it on power saving mode (if it didn’t already die), so I can’t use it to translate things for me. This is how I ended up in North Nicosia, without a usable phone, trying to figure out how to get to the Kyrenia gate.

Learn from me and my mistakes, and not only make sure that your phones are fully charged when you leave where you’re staying (make sure to bring the correct converters so you can charge all your electronics), also keep a portable charger or two fully charged and with you at all times, so you can continue to use these really helpful tools for dealing with foreign languages on your trips.

Bonus Tip

Learn what basic gestures in the country you are traveling to mean, because when you don’t have the language, sometimes you need to rely on pantomine. But these aren’t always clear cut.

In Greece, for example, a slight upward tilt of the head (sometimes with a tongue click) means no, while a slight forward nod means yes. (This gets extra confusing because neh, which means yes, but sounds like no, making gestures even harder to understand.)

In Bulgaria, it gets even more confusing, with shaking your head meaning yes and nodding your head means no.

Be careful when doing a thumbs up, thumbs down, V sign, or ok sign in different regions, as in many of these places these can be horribly offensive.

Final Thoughts

Traveling the world is an incredible experience, even if it requires a bit of extra effort to communicate more effectively with others. Learning new phrases and discovering ways to connect with people who may seem completely different from us can be eye-opening. It not only deepens our understanding of the world, but also highlights the shared humanity that unites us all.

Have you done a lot of traveling? Was it to places where you spoke the language or not? What are your tips to help with communication barriers when traveling? Which of these did you use?

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