Unless you're a natural linguist who can master half a dozen languages at will and get by in a dozen others, there's always going to be a time when you need a translator, whether to read business articles, do that French homework or prepare for a trip abroad. Normally you'd have to plough through a hefty dictionary or call on the services of a native speaker, but thanks to Avanquest there's now a much simpler solution.

The biblical Tower of Babel was constructed to confuse humans by having them all speak different languages, yet Babylon 6 - like Douglas Adams' Babel Fish - has now brought many of those languages back together in such a way that you can understand them all. At the heart of the system is an online database of 1,200 sources in more than 50 languages. This database also includes 25 professional dictionaries in 13 languages ranging from French, German, Dutch and Portuguese to Hebrew, Traditional Chinese, Korean and Swedish.

The software is an absolute doddle to use. By holding Ctrl and right-clicking on any text in any desktop application (including Microsoft Office documents, Web pages and instant messages), a pop-up window appears with the relevant translation. You have 17 languages to choose from in this way, including the less common Ukrainian and Farsi. If you want to translate larger chunks of text, you can cut and paste them into the translation window and the results appear almost instantly below. There's even a cross-translation tool that reveals all possible translations of the chosen words or phrases.

As well as translation, Babylon 6 will provide an immediate dictionary explanation of unknown or difficult words. In addition to the supplied in-house English dictionary, you're also linked to Wikipedia, the online multilingual encyclopaedia which provides more expansive explanations.

For instance, if you click on the word 'review', Wikipedia gives you: "A review is an evaluation of a publication, such as a movie, video game, musical composition, or book or a piece of hardware like a car, appliance, or computer. In addition to a critical statement, the review's author may assign the work a rating (for instance, one to five stars) to indicate its relative merit. More loosely, an author may review current events or items in the news."

Although several other dictionaries are listed (including the Concise Oxford Dictionary and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary), licences to use them have to be downloaded and paid for separately (averaging around £40 each). If you're unsure about English pronunciations, there's a 'Say It' male or female voice to help you out, although much of the time he/she sounds suspiciously like a Dalek.

One other facility that will prove especially useful when going abroad is a conversion chart that will enable you to make comparisons between currencies, measurements and time zones across the continents. Currency updates, by definition, have to be bang up to date and you're supplied with a link to constant revisions.

As an aid to translation in an impressive range of languages, Babylon 6 is both easy to use and surprisingly accurate (especially when it comes to full sentences) and should be an invaluable tool, despite the robotic voice assistance and costly supplementary dictionaries.