Sorry to resurrect this thread, but it seems like the correct place to ask this question:

We're considering a trip, and our only real concern is the language barrier. Neither of us speak or read any Chinese at all. While I plan to learn a few important basic words, I've never been great at picking up new languages.

What we need is something like the university students mentioned earlier - someone cheap, who can just serve as a translator when needed. That sounds like a great idea, but where would you find one of those? We'd obviously prefer to have that arranged in advance, rather than showing up in each city, wandering around asking if people spoke English and were free for the next couple of days.