[dropcap]T[/dropcap]raveling the world is exciting. You get to visit amazing new places and see things that only a privileged few can in this economy. Without knowing the native language though, voyaging to a foreign nation can become more difficult than it should be. For instance, many Americans wish to see Europe. Luckily, a few countries have many English-speaking citizens. When one ventures to France or Italy, however, verbal communication turns into many a slowly uttered word combined with the appropriate body language. It's not very accurate.

For those fortunate enough to own an iPhone, there's an overabundance of tools available for translating everyday vocabulary. The problem with this surplus is more than half the apps aren't worth downloading because they're either underdeveloped or outdated. I reviewed a nice translation app called Language at iPhone.AppStorm earlier this week and enjoy using it as my everyday app for rendition. However, I was recently emailed by the developer of Languages, a different approach at translation. The premise of the app is to be a bilingual dictionary, not a quick translator. Keep reading for a closer look at the plural version of my favorite iPhone translator.

Aesthetics first

Beautiful apps have always trumped widespread ones. Design should always be considered the most important element of an app. It's what makes things appealing to the average user. When Google Translate is compared to Language, a designer would quickly pick the latter for its appearance. Languages is even better. From the very start, subtle and minimal design come into play. It's nothing skeumorphic, just perfect. Everything from the eloquent font to the dictionary covers looks good.

Straightforward functionality

Is it a word you seek? There's a search button at the top of every dictionary; don't let the crazy list of words in the screenshot above confuse you. It also hangs around just in case you end up scrolling to the bottom. Swiping to the right will also open search using a fancy folding animation (shown above). The app is full of animations like this. One other can be found when tapping the button to change languages (top right) in a dictionary.

On to searching itself, which is a feature many will be using. After all, simply browsing a dictionary doesn't sound like one of the more exciting tasks. As shown in the screenshot above, a word that contains what you've typed in the search field will appear in the results. In addition, as a way of making it easier to understand the relation between the two, the developer has included a highlighter for the portion of the word that belongs to the search query. It's definitely a good step in user experience and adds convenience to looking up words.

Browsing a word is easy and includes an option to copy it or jump to one listed in the definition somewhere in the dictionary. There are no options for Languages, though in-app purchases will likely be coming in the future to make way for new languages. Other than all of that, the iPhone 5 support is a nice thing to see and overall, the app's functionality is great: there weren't any issues or missing features.

Worth every penny

After reading so much about this fancy bilingual dictionary, you probably want to buy it. It's available right here for just 99 cents. It includes 12 dictionaries. I'd highly recommend this app to anyone who travels or uses a bilingual dictionary on a daily basis. It's beautiful, fits in your pocket, and couldn't be more perfect.

Score: 10/10