We are still putting on the final touches, but Lingopal is looking pretty good these days.

To check it out point your browser, mobile or other wise, at m.lingopal.com – and let us know what you think.

Lingopal offers phrase translation over 43 languages – with the version you see at the mobile site for now offering a selection of the 1000 total phrases.

We are putting the final touches on the downloadable version, which will look pretty similar, but be on your phone as an application.

The point of Lingopal is to break the ice and to start a conversation with people that speak different languages.  So while we have the standard travel and basic stuff in there, we are more interested in having a bit of fun with the phrases. This sample below from the flirting category worked pretty well for meeting a bunch of people in Sydney on Friday night. Luckily they didn’t work too well – Not only would my girlfriend take rather unkindly to any “success” with the phrases, but I was also out with friends in Oxford street – which is the gay district of Sydney.

Faux French

Pretending to be foreign in the hope of making one seem more attractive to the opposite sex is not an uncommon thing – I failed miserably as Viktor the Lithuanian poet, and Helmut the German conscientious objector, until Phillipe Jeanneau emerged, the sailor from Marseilles.

Back then I had a bare smattering of French words, but a passable accent and enough fabricated mistakes when speaking English worked wonders.

Of course they were never sustainable.

Rosie caught me out the following night when she passed me in a bar as I was talking to a friend about rugby.

Tamara (I placed bogus emphasis on the second syllable of her name) overheard me talking normally on the phone, and things really hit the skids on the night I made moves on a young lady who turned out to be a French teacher.

Much the same thing happens in Foux Da Fa Fa, an amusing parody of ’60s French songs by Flight of the Conchords, the NZ duo who recently won a Grammy award.