( 5 reviews )
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( 1 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: 01-26-2009
This very small (3 3/4 x 2 1/4) item offers many attractive features other than its size. Seven languages are included for its purposes: English/French/German/Spanish/Italian/Japanese/Mandarin, and eight conversational categories are presented, including general speech/emergency situations/entertainment/sightseeing/geographic directions/restaurants/transportation/living accommodations. These are included upon an attached two page sheet of travel related phrases. The screen is backlit for dark hour convenience and a jack is built in for assistance in situations where traffic and other noise would obviate the use of headphones. There is a favorites button that enables the user to save frequently used phrases and a method is on hand for keeping a list of numbers important to travelers (telephone, address, et alia). The Translator also will provide accurate time zone differences. There is even an alarm clock! However, with all of this, the advantage ascribed to the Translator for avoidance of flipping through a dictionary is tenuous, at best. For this is essentially a talking phrase book, with many like competitors. It does not serve as a dictionary nor as a translator; in fact, there is no method here by which one may enter a word or phrase for translation. But then, it is not marketed as such; there are a good many electronic dictionaries that are widely available. The small size of this item unfortunately is asked to host a raft of tiny buttons (20) with even tinier descriptors; those who may be far-sighted will struggle a bit with these, even with the use of eyeglasses. In the final analysis, this Nyrius Translator will probably be most useful to individuals who may wish to improve their pronunciation while in their hotel rooms or for pointing at a native speaker, thereby letting the machine do the work. Two lithium batteries are included and installed, a nice touch, and an instruction manual is very helpful. The Translator is supported by a one year warranty.
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( 1 of 3 found this review helpful ) Posted: 01-15-2009
Rather than a "translator", this is an electronic phrase book. It contains some 700 phrases in 7 languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese (though which dialect, Mandarin or Cantonese, isn't clear), and Japanese. You select one of 8 categories by pressing a button, and then page through sub-categories, and then finally select a specific phrase.For example, if you want to ask for the train station - a very common question in most of Europe - select Travel, page past Taxis, Buses and Trams, and Underground Travel to Trains, and then select the first phrase: "Where is the nearest train station?"This little device has numerous disadvantages over an ordinary, paper phrase book. It's actually rather bulky considering how few phrases it actually contains. The reference guide that comes with it is a single double-sided sheet of paper, and it's easy to see that a phrase book with just these phrases would only run to a few pages, even if the pages were 2.5" x 4" like this unit.The phrases generally don't fit into the small text display, so you have to scroll through each message horizontally if you're unsure what you're selecting. Only "Where is the" fits on the screen initially for the phrase "Where is the train station?", for example. Sometimes it's obvious what the rest will be, sometimes it's not.Unless the phrase in one of the first few listed, it's time consuming to find what you want, and you can waste considerable time fumbling through the phrase list if you can't find something that's quite right. The button labels have extremely tiny print, which I didn't find difficult, but could be unusable for older users.At least it does let you bookmark phrases you use frequently. You just press "save" when you find one you'll probably use a lot. Though you don't want to save too many, because scrolling through the list of saved phrases becomes too time consuming if you do.The main advantage over a paper phrase book is the device's ability to speak the phrases. Or rather, it would be if the pronunciation wasn't terrible. The "voice" has a heavily synthesized tone to it, with the reedy tone, odd pauses, bad accent, and incorrect intonation common to such voices. I suspect most native speakers will have some difficulty understanding what's being said. At least as much as trouble as listening to someone garble a phonetic phrase book. You can of course point to the display, but you could do the same with a paper phrase book.This would be more understandable if this were a true translator, where you could type in any phrase and it had to struggle with splicing the words together. Since it's only playing back canned phrases, it really should be playing back perfect recordings of native speakers. That would be a distinct advantage over the way I generally mangle an unfamiliar language.I strongly suspect that this device is completely useless for Chinese. Chinese is a tonal language, and the translator doesn't get emphasis correct. Just as bad, the translated phrases are displayed as Romanized text, rather than ideograms. That's fine for Westerners, but of little use if you're actually traveling there.I love gadgets, but the next time I'm traveling outside of the country, I won't be taking this one along. - Gus
