Today's language translation apps are like self-driving cars: incredibly useful, promising, nearing maturity, and almost entirely powered by machines. It's astonishing that the technology even exists. Even so, machine translation is still clunky at times, if not awkward. Consider a recent conversation I had with my neighbor, Andre, who immigrated from Russia last year. Speaking little to no English, Andre is navigating the American Dream almost entirely through Google Translate, the most popular speech-to-speech translation app, first launched 10 years ago.

You totally prepared for this trip. You booked the flights months ago. You have all the best sights saved in Google Maps. But then you land in Munich or Kigali or Buenos Aires and realize you can't even identify the sign pointing toward baggage claim, much less tell your cabbie where you're headed. Luckily your phone can now do those things for you.