Besta CD-637P: Two Way English - Chinese Sentence Translation Electronic Dictionary (Voice: Mandarin/Cantonese/English/Japanese)

by Besta

Product Details

• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• ASIN: B001PM9KAS
• Item model number: CD-637
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #91 in Electronics > Office Electronics > Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators > Foreign Language Dictionaries
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 14, 2009

Product Description

Built in English-Chinese Dictionary with approx 300,000 searchable words and phrases. Latest version of the reputable <Oxford Advanced Learners English-Chinese Dictionary> with approx 167,000 illustrative sentences. 130,000 human voice example sentence recordings for English/Chinese and Oxford dictionaries. Built in English Collocations Dictionary, 140,000 word group and up and over 50,000 MP3 recorded sentences. Largest Downloadable professional dictionaries database, including 161 volumes of terminology and technical term dictionaries complied by Besta, National Institute for Compilation and Translation (Taiwan), National Science and Technology Term Standard Committee (China), the best reference tool for professional, students and researchers alike. Built in Cambridge Encyclopedia, ranked top 5 in the world for popular encyclopedias, with approx. 4,000,000 headwords and 24, 3000 phrases and definitions. 5 different Adjustable font sizes for better visual. Besta syllable pronunciation, an ideal tool for beginner level English speaking learners.. Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Besta exclusive real time mouth to mouth. New user friendly word search, search multiple words using "and" and "or". Live Voice (Real Human pronunciation). Built in the newest Question and Answers for US Naturalization, helpful question possible asked during the interview for the US Naturalization process.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not so great for english-speaking Chinese learners, June 4, 2009

By 

J MCCOY (Garland, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Besta CD-637P: Two Way English - Chinese Sentence Translation Electronic Dictionary (Voice: Mandarin/Cantonese/English/Japanese) (Electronics)

Besta CD-637: English <-> Chinese Sentence Translation Electronic Dictionary (Voice: Mandarin/Cantonese/English/Japanese)
I was disappointed with the Pinyin input for this product. It is basically a single character mode pinyin input, i.e. it won't accept whole word or partial phrase entries like the Microsoft or Google pinyin input tools. So if you start typing "xuyao" (for the word "to need") it will halt after the "xu" and force you to select a character before moving on the the rest of the word. Accepting whole word or even phrase level input would limit the context to a few characters, aiding a non-Chinese speaker.
The handwriting input seemed to work pretty good, but most beginning Chinese learners are not going to be using this as their primary input method.
The Chinese pronunciation didn't make use of common rules like tone Sandhi, so the resulting voice output was very stilted and incorrect.
In general the device seemed to be much geared toward a Chinese-speaker learning English, which is not surprising. It won't be very useful for my needs though.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More than a translator, October 10, 2009

By 

Peter Glass (Bellevue, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Besta CD-637P: Two Way English - Chinese Sentence Translation Electronic Dictionary (Voice: Mandarin/Cantonese/English/Japanese) (Electronics)

I just got back from five weeks in China. I purchased the Besta CD-637P a couple of months before I left the US. This gave me an opportunity to get familiar with it before I needed to use it. It is a multi-function device, I strongly suggest you give yourself some time to get up to speed before you need to use it. This device has a lot of functions. You do not want to be looking through a user manual while you are trying to use it.

So that there's no mistake about it, I recommend this device. Although it is quite pricey and has some flaws, generally I found it to be very useful. It is far more than just a simple electronic dictionary. I plan future trips to China and even as my Mandarin skills improve, I feel this device will continue to be useful.

First thing is I never had a problem with the battery running down. If you can't keep the device powered up, nothing else matters. I never had a problem with this. However, I did not use several features (like the MP3 and video player). If I had made more demands, maybe this would have been an issue. Even so, it would be easy enough to carry a spare battery as I do for my camera.

So the good news first. Probably the coolest function is the ability to translate sentences rather than just words. Keep the sentences short an simple and this device does a pretty good job most of the time. I have a very basic, limited knowledge of Mandarin, this device really helps with communication. I often found myself trying to converse with folks who had a slightly better command of English than I had of Mandarin. Several times, the comment about the CD-637P was "that is cool".

But beyond the translator the device provides a 3 time zone world clock. If you are texting with folks in the US, it's good to know what time it is elsewhere (no, this device does not do text messaging). There are also multiple alarms available, this came in handy on several occasions. And a calendar - it's amazing how easy it is to lose track of the day and date when removed from ones normal routine.

It also provides conversions. Obviously, currency conversion is handy, but it also helps with temperature and other physical units. This also proved useful. There is also a function to keep track of expenses (this made customs declaration a breeze). A calculator is built in. There are a ton of other functions that I never used. I'm still learning how to operate this thing. But the ability to fully exploit the device was inhibited due to compatibility problems (see comments that follow).

But there are a few things that are less than great about this device as well. First, it is obviously designed for a native Chinese speaking person rather than an English speaking person. At times the user interface is less than easy to interpret. The graphical menu is all but useless for an English speaker. At other times I found the text menu would be displayed in something other than English and it would take a mysterious sequence of button presses to get it back to English. The text size button is poorly placed and easy to press by accident. It took a while to re-discover how to restore the text size to something that could be easily read.

The software comes on poorly labeled CDs. Finding what's what on the discs is trial and error. The vendor claims that the device is Vista compatible, which is simply not true. This is a bigger problem than it might seem at first. Due to the lack of compatibility, you can't download any updates from the web. If they should fix the compatibility problem, I have no idea of how I will be able to update my device. I can't communicate with my Vista machine. I assume that the Besta OS is updateable, but I do not have a clue how I will be able to update my device should they address some of these issues.

Another major flaw is the verbal/pinyin translation. After you translate English to Mandarin you can press a button and get a rather stilted verbal Mandarin translation accompanied with pinyin. But as soon as the verbal pronounciation completes, the pinyin disappears from the screen - How dumb is that? Not a problem if you can read hanzi, but if you can read hanzi, you don't need the pinyin in the first place.