Electronic Translators

[Ssc]

LAST EDITED ON 20-Apr-04 AT 09:29 AM (BST)

Hi All,

Has anyone any experience of electronic language translators,to be used like a combined dictionary and phrasebook.

The idea is to type in what you want to say in English and it gives the French translation, and vice versa.

I have seen the Franklin ones but they seem a bit limited. Has anyone used one of these and what did you think. Does anyone have any info on Palm PDA or Pocket PC plus appropriate software. Obviously more expensive but hopefully more comprehensive

As you can gather my French is very limited and I thought something like this may help me get by whilst I am learning.

TIA - Tony

[Ex Forum Admin]

You could try http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr which may prove useful. Whether it is fully accurate I'm unsure but it may help in the meanwhile.

Regards,
Forum Admin

[Quillan]

I have not tried any Pocket PC products but you could try searching on Google for Pocket+PC+Software there are over 4 million entries but most of the popular Pocket PC sites come up first. Most of the software is free or shareware so you can download some stuff and try it before you buy.

Q

[Diana]

I bought a small 20 one from Argos a couple of years ago and have to say I found it next to useless. As far as I could make out you had to type in the infinitive for verbs and not the declined form, well if you knew that to start with would propably would not need a translator. Also as with the likes of bable fish (which I find very helpful) you do need some grasp of the language otherwise you can end up with a lot of nonsence. I do use bable fish for either English to French or visa versa as I have enough grasp of the written form to be able to realise if it has done something really stupid, but I would never use it for a language I have no grasp of.

Diana

[Hegs]

Does anyone have
>any info on Palm PDA
>or Pocket PC plus appropriate
>software. Obviously more expensive but
>hopefully more comprehensive

I use a PocketPC with the Collins French dictionary, it cost about $30 for the software. You can get very good deals on old Pocket PC PDA's on ebay, new ones start about UKP 200.

I travel a lot and use my PDA a great deal anyway, the PDA dictionary itself is somewhat limited in range but a godsend when it is needed.

[Nickndrachael]

I have a Franklin / LAROUSSE translator which I carry round with me and which I use for the occasional word. It has a good range of words, but doesn't seem to handle sentences very well - at least I can't make it work. I find it quite useful.