Translation software and electronic dictionaries

When you travel in Belgium you could sometimes use some help with a translation. In the Northern part everything will be indicated in Dutch. In the Southern part this will all be in French. And in a smaller region in eastern Belgium everything is written in German.

Not much information in English

Only in hotels, on international airports, in important museums, and the larger tourist attractions, you will get information in English. For the rest it will be in one or sometimes two of the above mentioned languages.

Six paperback dictionaries?

To cover three languages in both directions one should bring six dictionaries to Belgium. This, of course, is no practical solution.

Electronic aids

We searched, found, and tested some great solutions, which we will describe in detail below. The first is a software product for the pocket PC: "Travel to Western Europe". The second is the "iTravl NTL-9C Talking 2-way Multilingual Language Communicator and Electronic Dictionary". Both solutions are from Ectaco.

Travel to Western Europe software for pocket PC

The software package contains English and 10 Western European languages in two different programs: a (talking) dictionary and a phrase book. This means that we have 20 different programs. One language is always English, the other can be chosen. And they always work in both directions. We have installed several programs on our pocket PC phone, which we carry everywhere we go.

In a Flemish restaurant

On the menu in Dutch we see "Geserveerd met aardappels". This probably means "Served with...". But with what? So we launch the English-Dutch dictionary on our phone and type "aarda". The program auto-fills the word.

So we find out that our meal will be served with potatoes. Great, isn't it?

In the opposite direction

We are still in the restaurant, but this time we want our meal to be served with potatoes. We tap the "Change direction" icon (see red arrow).

Now we type "potato" and see that the translation is "aardappel". But there is more. Beneath the first occurrence of potato we see some phrases: "potato: Does the meal come with p..."

When we tap that phrase, we get the complete translation of it. Now we could tap the speaker icon, so that our phone speaks it out loud, but the waiter will probably not understand it at all. The translation is done by translation software and is far from perfect. Especially for the Dutch language. A much better solution will be to let the waiter read the phrase. This is perfect and he will understand it without any problem.

Different keyboards

Did you notice the different keyboards for English and Dutch? Every language pops up its own keyboard.

Phrase Book English-French

Here we see the different Topics.

Every Topic has several Categories.

And now the nicest part

If you tap the upper speaker icon (see the red arrows) the program will speak out loud the English phrase. The lower one speaks out the corresponding French phrase. And these pronunciations are perfect as they are all recorded by native speakers.

The waiter or any one else will perfectly understand what you mean. In the phrases we see underlined text. If you double-tap such a text a new window opens with alternatives. Choose one and the two phases will be adapted correspondingly.

Why not learn a language?

The ECTACO iTRAVL Alpine-9C Talking 2-way Multilingual Language Communicator and Electronic Dictionary, as it is officially called now, does everything what the above program does and much more. It is ideal for text translations and for learning a foreign language. The time traveled in a plane or as passenger in a car could be well used with this device.

The following photos are of a lower quality than the above ones, because they are not screen captures, but photos taken from the screen with a digital camera.

The Main Screen

Here we see the main screen with 5 segments.

First we choose a language

Tapping the cental part of the main screen brings up the following screen, where one can choose the second language. The first language is always English in this model.

Translation and Learning

The iTranslate button on the main screen brings up the following menu. Here lies a wealth of possibilities to learn a foreign language.

The Language Teacher teaches you the alphabet, words, phrases and in the dialogs section you can verbally test your knowledge. The device has a built-in microphone and comes with a headset with microphone. If your pronunciation is correct, it will recognize what you said and print it on the screen.

The Dictionary translates written words in both directions and has a powerful spell checker, to help you find the exact correct word.

The WordNet Dictionary is an explanatory dictionary for the English language.

The Audio Phrasebook does double duty. All words and all phrases are recorded by native speakers for every language. But it also listens how you pronounce them. It prints what it understood on the screen. You can indicate if this is correct or wrong. If the text does not correspond with your spoken word or phrase, you can try again.

The Text Translation allows you to enter any text and translates it to the other language. In the photo below we have entered the English text in the upper part by means of the virtual keyboard. Within 10 seconds it offered the correct French translation in the lower part.

The FlashCards are 4 fascinating games that will help you quickly develop your vocabulary.

Travel Information

Under the iTravl tab on the main screen we find lots of useful information for the world traveler: Fodor's Travel Guide to 50 cities, the CIA World Factbook for over 180 countries, Audio Books for the Louvre Museum, the Orsay Museum, Versailles, the Historic Paris Walk, World Time, Calendar, Size Equivalents, Metric Conversion, and Cultural Notes.

Under Extras we find an Audio Player, Tasks, a Calculator, some Settings, and a Voice Recorder.

Changing Languages? No Problem.

If now we would be interested in the Central European languages or others, we do not need to buy another iTravl device. All we need is a SD card with the languages of our choice.

Hundreds of possibilities and combinations

Find out yourself about the near endless possibilities at Ectaco.

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