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Smartphones connect world travelers as apps translate real-time conversation

A man steps to the counter and with a thick accent, glancing toward the well-worn book in his hands, says to the clerk: “After the paunch comes the dance.”

The clerk looks away nervously, unsure, as the customer implores: “To craunch the marmoset?”

This hypothetical exchange imagines an unwary tourist employing the now-classic Portuguese-to-English conversational guidebook, “English as She is Spoke,” published in 1855 by the arguably amateur linguist Pedro Carolino.

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