Crossing the language barrier with technology

Check out this new iPhone app, called Pleco 2.2,  for reading Chinese characters.  The technology for crossing the language barrier is really improving rapidly when you consider the olden days when people had to thumb through paper dictionaries to get their point across.  What long-term effects will these new technologies have for bringing people together, for contributing in some measure to cross-cultural understanding?

Pleco 2.2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7VTo0656Rc&feature=player_embedded

Will we one day see the "Universal Translator" depicted in Science Fiction since 1945?  The idea is that you could speak one language into one end of the device and out would come another language from the other end of the device.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_translator

Any future universal translator would naturally be a moving target if folks like Wittgenstein, Sapir, Whorf, and Chomsky are right, as language does not necessarily derive from inherent logical structures, nor does it remain static as people's experiences change.  These are things to ponder as the world's speakers of 4000+ different languages come closer and closer to one another in an increasingly connected world.