Portable, real time voice translation systems, and associated methods of use, are provided. The systems include a translation system for use on a single unit, portable computing device and operable for accessing a multilanguage database, selecting a source language from a plurality of source languages and a destination language from a plurality of destination languages, inputting a source phrase, transmitting the source phrase to a speech recognition module, a translation engine, and a template look-up engine for finding the phrase template associated with the destination phrase from among the multiple languages. The spoken translation is then output in the selected destination language. The translation system has a total time between the input of the source phrase and output of the destination phrase that is no slower than 0.010 seconds, and a communications interface operable for communicating with a second computer system.