The original "Babel fish" as imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The rise of the mobile phone may have connected most of humanity, but many communications get lost in translation. That may be about to change.

Google has revealed plans to turn phones into “universal translators”, allowing owners to speak into a device in one language, while the person they are calling hears it in their mother tongue.

The company says it is creating prototype devices which one day will allow you to travel to remote parts of the planet without having to worry about the language barrier. The devices would be akin to the “Babel fish” imagined by Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Speaking at the company’s headquarters in Mountain View, California, Hugo Barra, a vice-president of Android, Google’s software