It can be a big help but it still takes patience. I spent a Sunday showing a Siberian tourist around Santa Monica and we were trying to talk films and I used the term "pan shot". Her puzzlement with the Google Translate for that was hilarious. Finally, I demonstrated filming a panoramic scene and I don't recall what the Russian words were, but she recognized that was what I was trying to explain.If service or wifi is available, there's always Google Translate. I believe it now incorporates speech recognition, to an extent. "Talk to the hand."
She agreed to let me post some pictures of her day by the sea and they're in my flickr.com account.
Santa Monica series