Abstract: Disclosed herein are systems and methods for receiving an input speech sample in a first language and outputting a translated speech sample in a second language in the unique voice of a user. According to several embodiments, a translation system includes a translation mode performing the above functions and a training mode for developing a voice recognition database and a user phonetic dictionary. A speech recognition module uses a voice recognition database to recognize and transcribe the input speech samples in a first language. The text in the first language is translated to text in a second language, and a speech synthesizer develops an output speech in the unique voice of the user utilizing a user phonetic dictionary. The user phonetic dictionary may contain basic sound units, including phones, diphones, triphones, and/or words.