Months before going overseas, I verified that I had an offline translator.  It took several tries for some reason, but I eventually did get Bing Translate on my computer. (Just by trying the store over and over.)

The day before I left, there was a Windows update of some kind.  I did not check to see if the update had uninstalled any of my apps, but I strongly suspect that it did, since there is no way I would have been ok going overseas without this application.

And now, as I type from a rare place that has internet access, for the limited amount of time that I *have* said internet access, I want to ask you good folks who frequent this forum:

How do I actually download the app?  

When I try, I get

"Your purchase couldn't be completed
Something happened and your purchase couldn't be completed.  Error code: 0x80070057
Try again / Cancel"

I looked around, and tried the "fix the store app" thing mentioned in this blog (without any luck): http://blogs.msdn.com/b/notime/archive/2013/10/18/fix-store-app-in-windows-8-1.aspx

I get the error consistently.  

Any help would be most appreciated.  It is very very difficult to function here without the ability to communicate like I need to, and without internet access.

Take a look at Bing apps cannot be opened or installed in Windows 8.1. I believe this will resolve your problem if you haven't done so already. I apologize for the late response.