In yet another sign of the growing popularity of Apple's iPhone, Google has updated another one of its products to work better on the iconic handset. On Thursday Google launched a new version of its Translate service that lets anyone convert their native tongue into one of the other 23 available languages. Google had added Hindi to the list of supported languages in May this year when the list was upgraded from 13 to 23. (See: Google adds Hindi to list of languages supported by its Translate feature)

The service has been reworked mainly to appeal to travelers who don't want to carry around phrase books and have their mobile phones with them anyway. In a post about the update titled Google Translate now for iPhone, Google software engineer Allen Hutchison notes that the tool uses as minimal an amount of data as possible, so it won't entail massive roaming charges when the user is outside his home country.

Hutchison says the general number of translations is anywhere between 200-400 per 1MB of data, which is quite a few considering data can cost you at least $0.005 per KB while abroad (depending on the carrier). Hutchison, with colleague David Singleton, are the brains behind the project.

He also mentioned that the feature has been developed using the AJAX Language API, so every time the Google Translate team updates the languages they support, the languages will automatically be added to the application.

The tool also keeps track of all the previous entries, so each time the user comes back to the page, his past translations will be there. He can then get it to go back and re-translate them all to another language without getting rid of the old ones.

Also, in case a user is trying to use it as a tool to communicate with someone else he can reverse the two languages on the fly, letting someone else type using their own language as long as it matches his own phone's selected character set.

Still missing from the mobile version of Translate is the site translator and the dictionary utility that pulls up full word definitions and commonly used phrases that surround them, the former being useful for hitting local hotel or attraction sites while out on the go.

In conclusion, Hutchison expressed hope that with the Beijing Olympics just underway, the tool will really be useful for globe-trotting travelers eager for sporting action in China while at the same time remaining communicative in Mandarin.