Combadges and universal translatiors not that far away.

On the July 9 episode of The Doctors, El Camino hospital  http://www.elcaminohospital.org/ was featured. This state of the art hospital featured several different technologies including what could be the beginning of modern day Combages and universal translator.   The staff of El Camino each is given a silent individual pagers, that allow emendate communication with who ever paged them. Each is calibrated to  advanced computer system that features a preprogrammed translator program that can change the page to the  users native language.

http://www.thedoctorstv.com/main/this_weeks_shows