The specific language situations that budget travelers encounter and how to handle them without language skills.

Ordering food without a shared language: point at what someone else is eating. Point at items visible in the kitchen or on display. Have Google Translate ready to show the vendor what you want. Most street food vendors deal with tourists regularly and can navigate this. Worst case, you get something unexpected and it's often fine.

Negotiating prices without shared language: show your phone with a number in the currency. The vendor shows their phone or writes a number. You counter. The math of haggling is universal.

Getting directions: Google Maps offline plus a hand gesture toward the phone showing the destination. The Maps.me offline map with your destination pinned. In most countries, showing a local your phone with a map works entirely without language.

Emergency situations: have your travel insurance emergency number saved in your phone in advance. Have a translation of 'I need a doctor' and 'I need help' in the language of each country you visit, saved as a note. Most countries with any tourist infrastructure have English-speaking staff at hospitals and clinics.

The learning investment: even 50 words of local language dramatically improves all of the above. Numbers, please, thank you, do you have, I want, too expensive, where is the toilet. These words in the local language improve interactions more than any translation app.