I remember reading an "interactive" book as a kid (a book with numbered short episodes, and at the end of each one you are presented with a couple of choices how the story would continue, it was awesome) where the good guy was sent back in time by the bad guy to the wild west where he had to convince the indians to trust him and fight with him against the same bad guy, who liked to slaughter them for fun, or die with them. In order to understand the natives, he had some gadget implanted in his brain that translated their language directly into his own. I remember thinking "yeah right, never gonna happen." :)

This is probably far away from being able to translate languages perfectly, but still. The future came pretty fast.