Internet voice telephony firm JAJAH has launched a first-of-its-kind free service that lets English and Mandarin speakers use mobile telephones to translate conversations.

The JAJAH Babel service will make an appearance in time for the Olympics in Beijing in order to help English-speaking tourists talk to the Chinese hosts. Basically it means that if you dial a number and speak what you want to say into the machine it will take what you say in one language and rephrases it in the other.

Now you will be able to tell a policeman that you were only downloading porn and not threatening to overthrow the Glorious People's Republic. According to a company press release, the software was developed with IBM and could mean the death of the translation book.

JAJAH plans to expand to other languages in coming months.