Electronic Translators

My mom and step-dad wanted to get me an electronic handheld translator (vertaalcomputer), and they sent me the Franklin Explorer 12 Language Translator FR-TJS12. While decent for traveling as a tourist, with a nice selection in the phrase book, it had a very limited vocabulary. Even very simple, basic words are missing. The FR-TJS12 is about as big as my passport, though thicker, and seems sturdy enough. It has far fewer words than my small-ish hardcopy dictionary.

I did some research, and as far as I can tell, every multi language translator has few words in it. The more languages, the fewer words per language, so one catering just to the languages you want is likeliest to be the most useful and affordable. A multi-language model would be practical for someone vacationing briefly in several places in Europe. The price is typically around $30.

Finding translators that have a lot of words in just two languages is not very easy, unless you're interested in Spanish. Finding Dutch-English ones is quite hard.

The first I looked at was the ones be Ectaco. Then I read about their customer service problems, and ran away screaming. They do look like good products on paper, but if there is a problem with anything (like the translator arriving with a dead battery), getting it replaced will be a nightmare. They also call them "talking" bilingual dictionaries, but forget to mention anywhere that some languages aren't available with that feature. Thai is one that doesn't talk, and I found a list of emails from one poor guy getting jerked around by Ectaco customer service for a couple years, saying they'd be adding an update for Thai speech. Does Dutch talk? I have no idea. I haven't been able to find a review of that particular model. Not that I care about the speech functionality, but it makes it hard to trust any of their claims. It also isn't clear if the irregular verb feature is available in both languages or just English. Prices start at the high end of the reasonable range, which is more than I want to risk.

iTravl is another one that looks good on paper and got horrible reviews everywhere I looked. Bad battery problems, bad speech, bad speech recognition, etc. And very expensive!

I finally settled on two items from Franklin that they don't sell directly from their website. The 1870 dictionary, with the BQN-2047 bookman card. The 1870 has been replaced with new dictionaries that do the same thing but cost more, according to the reviews. The one I bought (DMQ-1870) comes pre-loaded with various English language software: dictionary, thesaurus, crossword solver, idioms, quotations, etc. A slot in the back allows for the insertion of any Bookman card - so I could also get an English-French card for $20-40 in the future if I decide I want it. I like the Bookman approach, since it's expandable without paying to buy a new device. SMRT.

Dutch Bookman cards are not easy to find. In fact, I could only find the Dutch-English card at Dutch websites, and it may even be disappearing from those if/when Franklin stops making them. In fact, the first place I ordered it from, c-device.com, emailed me to let me know it was out of stock. They tried to talk me into buying their in-house product that would be available in a few weeks, but I didn't want to wait that long and was a bit wary of a product I haven't seen any reviews for. To their credit, they refunded the money very quickly once I made it clear I wanted a refund, and I wouldn't hesitate to buy from them in the future.

So I bought the 1870 and BQN-2047 from pcmedia.nl, a Dutch company located nearby. The 1870 is a little wider and longer than the multi-language model. The multi-language one might fit into pants' pockets when standing up, but the 1870 wouldn't. It's still small enough to fit into my coat pockets easily. It's also light weight and has a sold feel to it - not flimsy.

The screen of the 1870 is big, and has good resolution. About 12 lines of text fit in the display from top to bottom, and over thirty letters from side to side. This is much much much better than the multi-language one, which has a display for 3 lines of text under 25 letters each. The multi-language one is simply too small to get an entire definition in it, and looking up words and scrolling is VERY slow. Like 5-10 seconds every time. The 1870, on the other hand, is quite fast unless it can't find the word. When that happens, it will take a few seconds to search for similar words in case you misspelled something.

Unfortunately, the Dutch card only has conjugations of English words on it. So I can look up an infinitive form of a Dutch word (like gaan - going), but not a conjugated form (like gaat - goes). This is the biggest disappointment in the Dutch-English card for me. Looking up a conjugated word form is the best use I'd have for a dictionary, and I can't do it at all with this item. But as far as I can tell, no dictionaries have that function in Dutch. Oh, and there's no speech at all with the Dutch-English card. I'm not bothered by that really, but it's a bit weird. Perhaps Franklin will come out with improved cards some day :-)