Customer Reviews

Franklin TES-118 English/Spanish Translator

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

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.

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.

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!

Sure it's only $20 or so, but it really isn't usable for any serious student of Spanish. For one thing, it doesn't give genders for the nouns. It won't give you a definition but hands you a phrase. However, it does tell time and store phone numbers and play games. I don't have any idea why they would call this toy a translator.

This device is small which is good. It isn't always the most user friendly but works fine once one learns how to use it.

It has a very small vocabulary in spite of its claim to have many thousands of words. When I read Spanish text that is classified as Intermediate, I find only 1 out of 5 words that I want to look up in this dictionary. These are straight forward words like "bankrupt".

This device is useful only for someone who needs basic vocuabulary.

The misleading promises of an enormous word and phrase bank for what appears to be a favorable price will surely lure you. However if you buy the product you will quickly discover the true nature of the translator and be deeply dissapointed. The translator can not process even basic words, and the phrases are sometimes grmatically incorrect. This product is a waste of money and will trully make you regret your purchase.

Limited to translating single words and short phrases, but I carry this to refresh my memory. Good for using on the road, it fits easily in a pocket, and is durable too. Not a tool for learning a language, but a lot easier than a paper dictionary.

I lost my handy Franklin translator a few months ago, and saw this version and couldn't beat the price. But it is missing over half the words I've attempted to look up, including "vow", "loving" and other simple words. And often the masc/fem is just not present, leaving you guessing. A complete waste of money. If I had the option of giving it NO stars, I would.

I'm sorry that this translator cannot be rated less than 1 star. This is a completely non functional piece of garbage. Of the first 10 words I typed in (from "The Easy Spanish Reader") this device only attempted to translate 2 of them. It did not define these two words, it only used them in phrases.For the other 8 words it listed possible spelling corrections. The words were spelled correctly. I assume that these simple words were not in this dictionary.
It may be that the software makes the assumption that all spelling is incorrect because the buttons are so small that it is next to impossible to type anything correctly.
Verbs seem to be identified only in the infinitive. Actual translation are rarely given.
Buying this device should never be considered.

in one day of owning this thing i've found it doesn't have the words...
-- dwarf
-- beech
-- oak
-- twin
-- wig
also, having _no_ gender for the nouns in inexcusable. there's so much potential for a good electronic translator, i can't believe this think made it to market... i have no respect for franklin, now i'm off to see if langenscheidt makes electronic translators.