You know if the App Store has been out for a month and we're posting about a web app, it has to be a good one. Google announced late last week that they've brought the terrific Google Translate service over to the iPhone. Of course, whenever you travel internationally, roaming charges (sometimes huge ones) can come into play, but if you find yourself tooling around Spain and need more phrases than ¿Dónde está el baño? or Tú eres mi chica, Google's web app will do the trick fast and easy.

And there's some nice coding in there, too -- the phrases translated get stored on the client side of the phone, so if you've already translated something, you don't have to reload the page to see it again. To use the service, just point your MobileSafari to translate.google.com. Folks in other countries probably still won't care too much what you have to say, but at least they'll know what you're saying.

Indie developer Rory Prior expects to release version 1.0 of his iKanji application this coming Thursday, he announced today.

iKanji is a tool for anyone learning Japanese, and combines meaning, reading and writing training and tests. Over 2,000 Kanji characters and 20,000 example words are included. This is an app for advanced learners who already have a grasp of the hiragana and katakana characters (which are covered in Rory's existing iKana app).

Until release, iKanji is still in beta and Rory is still accepting beta testers, with priority given to students. If you're interested, let him know sharpish. Pre-orders are also being taken, and they qualify for a 10% discount on the standard price of €20 (about $30).

Rory also makes photo gallery maker InstantGallery, and news reader NewsLife.

Buon Giorno. ¡Hola!. Guten tag. Of course, the best way to learn a language is to immerse yourself in the country where the language is spoken. But that's not always a possibility, especially if you're working your way towards a trip or preparing for a move. If you're trying to learn a language in the new year, here are a few ways that Apple technology can help you work towards your goal.

Subscribe to a Language-learning Podcast. iTunes offers any number of podcasts that will help you learn new languages. A quick search on "language" turned up lessons for French, Japanese, Italian, Latin, Tibetan, Turkish, Gaelic and more. On the down side, clearly some of these podcasts are home brew. On the up side, the podcasts are free. You may want to try out several podcast providers before settling on your subscriptions.

Buy a learning audio book. The iTunes store offers a wide range of language courses in their audio book section. These courses are typically of a higher quality than the podcast ones, but they also cost quite a bit more. If your local library lets you, you may want to borrow language audio materials from their collections and use them with your iPod. Ripping policy varies by library, so make sure you know the rules before you rip.

Use OS X-compatible language-learning software. Many top-brand language packages like Berlitz now run on OS X as well as Windows. Interactive software can really help you master certain language skills like grammar via interactive lessons.

Take advantage of OS X's internationalization. OS X is particularly multi-language, multi-alphabet aware. If you're trying to learn new languages, take a few minutes to explore the International system settings pane with it's "input menu" virtual keyboards that will help you type in the language of your choice.

Sign up for a class. The success of iTunes U has made it possible to sign up any number of university and college courses. The use of iPods and podcasts are now so prevalent that Duke now offers an iPod-orientation course for all its language instructors. Unfortunately, some iTunes U courses require that you have an actual student ID for sign-up. (Stanford is one such university.) Some do not. Also unfortunately, you need to perform quite a lot of googling to find public iTunes U classes for any particular language, so be persistent. iTunes does not yet offer a specific iTunes U search engine.

Our friends at Download Squad have discovered a melding of two scripting worlds: AppleScript and Ruby. RubyOSA is the darling scriptenstein of these two languages, and while I don't know a lick of either, I'm willing to bet this could be a popular amongst the code ninjas in the audience. Ruby is a popular language (the 13th most popular, by their numbers), and it's the foundation of the Ruby on Rails framework which has given us such handy web 2.0 apps as Backpack, Odeo, Strongspace and many more.

This is about the line, however, that I reach where I would need to start pretending I know more about any of these languages, so I'll let you check out RubyOSA for yourself to see if it gets your coding gears turning.

One of our readers recently wrote in and asked us how he could slim down his install of OS X. One simple way is to get rid of all those languages that you don't use which are installed by default with OS X (if you hit 'Customize' while installing OS X you can really cut down on the bloat by only installing the languages and print drivers that you will use).

Monolingual is a freeware app that deletes all those other pesky languages from your Mac (just be careful not to delete the language you use because the only way to get them back is to reinstall OS X).

I just ran it on my Macbook and it freed up 2.4 gigs of space, though it did take about 30 minutes to run.

Update: Be careful to only remove the extraneous languages from your Mac using this program (as I did). Uncheck all the 'Architecture' options, otherwise you'll break Rosetta and blame me (and no one wants that).