Machine Translation that isn’t a black-box

Finding yourself as one of two intelligent human beings who don’t happen to share a common language but need to communicate immediately and on the spot, what are your options?

I’d appreciate anyone’s engagement with me on this, but here’s what I’ve got:

• You serendipitously find and recruit a passer-by who speaks both your native Thai and the other’s native Finnish, is willing and able to interpret, and happens to know any necessary topic-specific words for your conversation in each language.
• You stare at each other awkwardly and resort to frustrated hand gestures and try to get through it as…