[bigbluesax]

For me personally using a translator app just adds an additional layer of awkward to every interaction. Where you have to fiddle with it and the other person might not understand how to interact with it right away. It's not a huge problem, but if your not super confident already, it might be enough to discourage you. When I went to japan, lots of people where very hesitant to use their english. Like they didn't want to embarass themselves. I'd never really experienced that before, everywhere else I had gone to previously, people's drive to communicate was usually a lot stronger than their drive to hide weak language skills.

[dazc]

I believe it is common with some nationalities (S Korea, for example) to study to the point of perfection but be very reluctant to speak another language outside of a classroom situation.

As a UK citizen, we have the opposite problem.