On my first visit to China I used my android phone. And had this application called "Hanping Chinese Pro" dictionary in it. It translates english-chinese-english, but usually one word at a time if you write in English. If she writes Chinese there, it will translate everything. But it can take a while of thinking about what is she actually meaning... Because the words have many meanings.
Also if she speaks basic/little English, she can speak as much as she knows, then look up the last word/words from this dictionary. And there, you have a full sentence.
Often even 1 word was enough to understand smd explain complex things.
I broke my previous android phone. And I did not even have to hesitate a second about what kind of new phone I would get. I knew instantly that it has to be android. To get this one application. The rest is just extra and "nice to have". But because of this application hehe. I will not change my android phone to another brand.
We could talk about many things in Finnish already, but her vocabulary was not too big. So whenever there was a word that we did not understand one way or the another. I would write her the word to this dictionary and it would give her the Chinese character for that word. And then she would learn the word in Finnish and English, but she forgot the English words in a matter of minutes. But she always wrote the Finnish word down so she could recite it, restudy and eventually learn/remember it.
Some days, we would spend hours just sitting in a tea house, KFC or whatever place that had air conditioning in it (it was summer and 30+ celcius) and go through of many words and she would study, write down all by using this application... Now we are at a point, where I can explain most of the things about everyday life and even more complex things to her by using her vocabulary.
Which has lead us to speaking "our own language" mostly grammar wise really bad Finnish, some English and some Chinese hehe... But I understand her and she understands me which is good for us.
