I talked very briefly to Kimmo Sainio of Cellictica, a Finland based mobile applications company focusing into translation services in Slush. Their service Trippo is available in the Nokia download catalogue in about 10 different countries, which has proven a good partnership for Cellictica. Trippo is a Java language based server-client application that can be used to translate a number of phrases. It currently supports translations from/to English-French, English-Italian and English-Spanish.

The cool thing about Trippo is that even if you’re shy – you can use it, the service itself can dictate the translation and thus help you out in an awkward situation abroad. The only question that comes to my mind is about the required internet connection to the server. John Biggs of CrunchGear once again reminded people travelling abroad to avoid data roaming – it still costs a fortune. This is a huge show stopper for many mobile consumer applications. Once we sort that out, a ton of applications will become a lot more useful.