How to tackle French and Italian ?

Learn a few polite terms in both languages and figure out how to do pantomime. Otherwise, in many tourist areas you'll find people who speak English.

I agree with #1. You are hardly the first tourist to go to France and Italy without speaking the language! Generally speaking, anywhere in Europe (probably anywhere in the world), younger people, say under the age of 30, speak some English - often excellent English - and will be happy to practise it with you.

Any special things you might need - foods you don't eat, for example - can be explained by showing pictures. As an example: no pork, a picture of a pig (downloaded from the Internet) with a line through it. Easy!

Agreed...many people in touristy areas such as English. From your other posts, I see you're visiting Paris, Rome, Florence and Venice--I was OK in English in all those places (except for when I wanted to practice my French in Paris last visit, when I didn't try English) but of course, learning a few phrases in those languages is going to be helpful.

Pish! Tush! Time to take a crash course in Latin!

Myanmarbound,

Cur Latine loqui potes senem sacerdotum?

Learn the following in each language. I'll provide polite anglicized French to get you started.
1) A greeting: Bone-zhur
2) Excuse me/sorry: Ek-skew-zay mwah
3) Do you speak English?: Par-lay voo zahn-glay?
4) Thank you: Mare-sea
This will get you most of the essentials. I recommend you string #1-#4 in sequence. Good manners go a long way, barking #3 by itself comes across as a bit rude.

As for the rest,
a) bring a small pad of paper and a pen (people might read written English better than they understand spoken English)
b) bring a small phrasebook
c) Twa-let sil voo play? ("toilet, please?) will be faster than the phrasebook and much less embarrassing than pantomime.

And when speaking English, speak clearly without slang expressions. Better to use old-fashioned terms that your grandparents and people of their generation would be familiar with, rather than the latest slang, which is not likely to be understood.

Anyway, it's really not a problem. Millions of tourists visit countries all over the world without knowing a single word of the local language, and they survive.