Customer Reviews

AM101 Electronic English Chinese Translator / Dictionary - Translates English Sentence / Phrase / Words to Chinese

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I purchased this translator after much research before coming to China to study Chinese. Many other brands were out of my price-range, so I was happy to have a more moderately priced model. I was also pleased that this translator was made for an English speaker learning Chinese, since many translators are made for a Chinese speaker learning English.

Overall, I am very pleased with this translator. It is easy to use, a great size to fit in a purse, comes with an English manual, has a very easy interface, and does a pretty good job at translating. One reason I was particularly interested in this dictionary was for its whole sentence translation (both from Chinese/English and from English/Chinese). The translation is by no means perfect, but when you are trying to get a complex idea across to someone who may or may not even speak the main dialect of China, I have found it quite useful. Unfortunately though, it translates the sentence into characters and it is a little troublesome to find the pinyin.

In other pros, I also appreciate the back light, the medical/business/law dictionaries (though they are not perfect), and the pinyin input. The voice pronunciation is adequate, and after hearing the voices on other dictionaries such as the well regarded Besta brand, I believe the AM101 is as good or better.

The extras in this dictionary are minimal, though it does have a rudimentary Tetris game which brought back memories of my childhood. I was also disappointed to find out that it didn't have an alarm. I have not used the MP3 function, though the voice recorder can be quite useful.
Overall, I am pleased with my AM101 and would purchase it again. I think it is especially beneficial for beginner/intermediate Chinese learners and for people who want a translator while traveling to China. For a helpful video tour of this dictionary, visit the company's website.

One final note: If you are studying abroad in China, I suggest you consider buying a dictionary in China. Many of my peers have purchased a Chinese brand dictionary that has character recognition for a comparable price, and they are all very pleased with it.

Nice compact unit, seems well made. Have found some words that do not translate right according to my Chinese friend. Reading through the included Chinese Idioms is very interesting. Backlight is a nice feature and the battery life is exceptional, we use it quite a bit and it still has the original batteries. Never tried the USB connectivity or audio capability.

Drawbacks: Pronunciation clarity is a bit lacking, quite a drawback when trying to use it as a learning tool. Uses 'v' for u (with oomlat) key for entering Pinyin spelling (corrected per feedback comment!). A nuisance "boot time" every time the unit is powered on, maybe 10 seconds.

Length:: 2:35 Mins

There may be better traslators out there but there are also alot more expensive ones. It's a good size, comes with a case and battery last pretty long. It does what you need it to do: translate chinese words you don't know and translate english words you don't know.

I think it pretty evently split between a person trying to learn english and a person trying to learn chinese. You can have the dictionary in english, trad. chinese, or simp. chinese.

There's a basic dictionary that you can look up how to say a certain english word in chinese but there are limits. I wish it was organize so it told me in what context the chinese words were used in. There are so man meanings to even just one english word...it gets annoying to always having to check the given chiense translation (if there's more than one, its just listed, good luck trying to find which one is the right one to use) and have to cross reference it in the chiense dictionary.

The more advance dictionary is for chiense to english translation. Problem is that its only in characters - it won't recognize just pinyin which is fine if your reading with pinyin but difficult to use if you hear someone say something and just want to look it up. Other dictionaries are included but I don't have much use for them such as a medical dictionary.

There's also alot of lists they put together like menu names, action words, emotion, body. I haven't put all of them to use but its they're handy sets to learn from.

A few games are included but they can only amuse you for so long. You can put in mp3s but the volume on this isn't very loud.

There are actually much more detailed dictionaries online but I bought this for convenience and it is convenient for the most part. THe dictioary is geared toward beginners and intermediate learners. All in all still worth the price.

AM101 Electronic English Chinese Translator / Dictionary - Translates English Sentence / Phrase / Words to Chinese and Vice Versa (Voice: Mandarin Chinese/English):

Product was new and arrived promptly. It is quite useful and worth the investment. Were the software a bit better organized it would stupendous. But for someone whose mastery of Chinese is less than stellar, I would rate it down a bit (to 4 of 5 stars) because one has to march through extra steps to get the information most useful to the novice.

I would like to update my previous review (see below).
Also would like but am unable to grant an extra star.
I have been living in China for a couple of months now and use the AM101 almost daily. So on this new experience i feel i should adjust the general feeling of my previous review.
What i use it for is help translating and writing text messages, ask something in writing in the shops and even have complete (shallow of course) conversations with Chinese friends. There are some really great featers on this deivce, like the quick startup time, the AAA batteries (and long battery life), the screen and keyboard lights (not so long battery life), the easy understanding for Chinese how to write and the simple but relatively accurate sentence translation. It does take some time to get used to how to handle the device, which words and grammar to use for explaining and how to interpret the Chinese to English translation. Therefore some basic knowledge of most used Chinese words and pinyin is maybe important for more accuracy. But once you have the feel for it, it does a very good job in daily conversations via whatever media.
So, before i was looking more at the technical value and thought i could be better off. But now i am looking more practically. It is not a multilangual human brain, but for such a small and handy device it is absolutely outstanding.

++++

I think a well made, orderly device, hardware wise. But the software i find a bit clumsy. There could be a lot of improvements here to make it really worth using, because it seems not to be made for real-time usage. But it does have some pinyin and pronunciations, so maybe the best for little on the market.
What i do like is that input is pinyin, what i dont is that there is no intonation (fi. rang4). So you have to know the characters to find a Chinese word. There is multiple character word search, and the division between basic and 'advanced' E>C is quite useful. This is only because the 'advanced' is so difficult to handle though. This because there is no direct pinyin (you can cursor to the characters to get the pinyin) and there are many descriptive explanations in the language of the word that you seek. Very not handy because for these description there is no pinyin so there is no way to find out what it is saying (in E>C fi, type 'and' and there is a whole screen full of characters that make your eyes spin...). I think there shouldnt have to be a description at all, just a list of accurate translations is much more practical.
The linking option is very handy, you can find the pinyin, get a clear pronunciation and find the detailed translation of a word or character. Too bad that from the translation there is this strange and confusing sequence of actions to do for it. Also from the translation there is no pinyin and an unclear pronunciation which makes this feature not easy to use in a conversation. And why not make a key or double click to get the C>E translation? The basic (unfortunately only E>C) is i think the best usable because there is a clear screen appearing with just one or a few translations with pinyin and just one button for linking.
I am not that interested in all the extras like the tools and information about China etc, but the pinyin pronunciation seems quite handy. Very meager without some more grammar and particles and stuff like that. And why not a easy clock/alarm screen-saver/function?
All and all, very decent and appears to be quite accurate. BBK's service is outstanding. But i do hope for a serious upgrade.

I brought it to help my aunt learn English (native Chinese speaker). It achieve the objective of being a dictionary as expected, and pronounce the words reasonably well in both English and Chinese (clear enough to understand).

One good/bad thing I notice is that it have multiple 'dictionary' (i.e. basic, full and several specialty) It appear that only the basic is the only one that can speak, and all other only display a translation. It would be better if all the meaning are merged into one dictionary.

In a dictionary translation, when speaking Chinese it pronounce each word rather slowly, and highlight each word that it is speaking.

The back light come in handy, especially in an indoor environment. Unfortunately, the Chinese character are in rather fine font, hence could be some what difficult to read for those that need reading glasses. (I didn't notice any option to turn the font to be bold yet...)

I have not really try the whole sentence translation feature.
I have not try the MP3 or data storage function.

For the price you can't go wrong. Works very well. I will be going to China soon, it will be going with me.

this translator is good enough to communicate. It is not perfect, but you can get the idea through. Writing the chinese characters is a bit complicated.

I was very impressed with this translator at first - it does work very well to translate from chinese Pinyin, and it is of fairly good quality, but I am now no longer quite as impressed, after buying a nicer one with more features (including a writing pad where I could write what a chinese character looks like and it would look it up for me and find the Pinyin, a feature this one sadly neglects, though it does have a dictionary based on radicals) at 75% the price [although, I bought the other one in Taiwan and don't know how readily available it is here]. So, all in all, it's not a bad translator, but certainly not the best buy for your money