Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator

by Franklin Electronics

Product Details

Product Manual [116kb PDF]

• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 2.8 x 0.5 inches ; 2.1 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: Currently, item can be shipped only within the U.S. and to APO/FPO addresses. For APO/FPO shipments, please check with the manufacturer regarding warranty and support issues.
• ASIN: B00005MMPJ
• Item model number: TES-118
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #50 in Electronics > Office Electronics > Electronic Dictionaries, Thesauri & Translators > Foreign Language Translators
• Date first available at Amazon.com: November 14, 2006

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Franklin's English/Spanish Travel Ace is the perfect, easy-to-use tool for anyone traveling to a Spanish-speaking country. You can instantly look up 650,000 translations from and to English and Spanish. The phonetic spell checker ensures the right word will be found even if you misspell it. There are also 2,000 conversational phrases available, categorized into topics like Doing Business, Travel and Directions, and Eating and Drinking.

The Travel Ace also has two classic games--Hangman and Quiz--a clock with world and local times, a calculator with metric and currency conversions, and a Rolodex Electronics databank for names and phone numbers.

Product Description

Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

69 of 72 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars NOT VERY HELPFUL, November 16, 2001

By 

palcat (Silicon Valley CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator (Office Product)

As a beginning Spanish student, I bought this little gadget because it boasted having a wealth of vocabulary and phrases.
I am disappointed with this product in several ways. First,
the size and design: it's very small which is fine, but the designers did two bad things, it's very hard to see the display
in any lighting, and the button(s) you need to use the most are
so small it's ridiculous. Second: The phrases are all preset, into categories. Forget about entering a phrase of your own. Many of the preset phrases are ridiculous, for instance, What is
your e-mail address? Why would a non-spanish speaking person
need that??? If you want to know where you can find a chinese
restaurant, you will need to look up each word individually, and then find out that "chinese" isn't in the database. So, have a
pencil and paper ready to construct your own clumsy sentences.

I gave it one star because it's better than having nothing. If
you were going to dash to Mexico for the weekend, this would get
you through. It's not user intuitive so expect to have to read
the booklet to find out how to capitalize a letter, as well as
using any/all of the functions. It's complicated, it's limited,
it's difficult to navigate. On the upside - you'll know what
time it is! There's a name & phone number database - it would
be a lot nicer to just be able to take a note - like what street
your hotel is on - or write down frequently used expressions of
your own instead of having to look up "What is the special
today?" every night at dinner. But, if your wife is pregnant,
goes into labor and you're panicking - this little gizmo will
come to your rescue. It's got that covered. A pocket dictionary
would be faster and more helpful.

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Save your money, July 9, 2002

By 

"dublin15" (Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator (Office Product)

I'd love to know how they figure in excess of 500,000 translations, Virtually every effort to translate a word came up "Correcting" and after a considerable time offered unrelated suggestions. Possibly of some use to absolute beginners, however at any level above this if you don't know the translation, then almost certainly this thing won't either.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best for the money, June 12, 2003

By 

Lobsta Johnson (Bruttenholm, TN) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator (Office Product)

Ok, this one does have a bit of a learning curve, and you MUST read the instructions! However, once you have mastered how to use it, this one is fantastic if you really want to learn the language. It has every verb conjugation in it, with the english translation. So no longer do you have to figure out "what does past imperfect mean?" but rather it gives you the actual english/spanish translation. For example, enter "study" (after selecting english-->spanish of course) and click "inflections". You can scroll down to see the present imperfect tense is:
"I have studied" and hit ENTER to see the spanish translation as "yo he estudiado". Try THAT with your "501 Spanish Verbs" book, that assumes you know what preterite and conditional tenses actually are! :-)

If you want to study the language and conjugate verbs, for less than $... you can't go wrong. But do read the manual!