A translatacomp, sometimes called "transcomp", functioned as an electronic translator, a machine designed to automatically figure out translations from one language to another. On one occasion, when an Alliance corvette encountered a google-eyed species, its translatacomp was unable to translate the species' language.
The core of a translatacomp was a dictionary database. The more words and details you added to it, the more precise the translations became.
While Leia Organa was on Shiva IV, she found it necessary to learn the enigmatic Calian language, due to her translatacomp's inability to recognize it, and she had to personally update the device's database.