Customer Reviews

Franklin TGA-495 12-Language Speaking Global Translator

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

 

 

Took a recent trip to China and Japan, and relied on the Franklin TGA-495 for my translation. Lets go over the good aspects first: #1. The battery life was awesome, and it charges off of USB, or included international adapters. I don't think I charged it once in two weeks. #2. Quick Search of words. When you search for words (say in English to Japanese mode) you get an instant result or results. Often you get a one word response in your language like "bathroom" and a phrase below thats like "Where is the bathroom". #3 It speaks! It is very useful to look up the phrase, listen to it a few times (so you can memorize it) and then speak it to the waiter, taxi driver, without having to peck at the device while the other person stares at you in confusion. #4 I was almost always able to look up the word or phrase that as least got my idea across. I would say it was effective 95% of the time.

The so-so features
#1 The Chinese and Japanese that is spoken from the translator is difficult for natives to understand. Chinese is a tonal language so pitch at certain points of your words actually changes the word. If the native person can't hear the pitch (flat tone, increasing tone, decreasing tone, tone that dips and comes back up), then the word means nothing to them (or the wrong word). I found the speaker on the translator not good enough to distinguish the needed pitches in Chinese when it talks, so the local person couldn't understand me. Thats when I pointed to the Characters on the screen and the person (almost 100% of the time) then knew what I was trying to say. A few would laugh at me and try to help me pronounce it correctly. I was more successful in Japan with the speaking feature.

Features that need improvement
#1 The roman characters used for Chinese translation are missing the inflection marks. This goes back to the tonal language thing in Chinese where "MA (increasing tone) MA(flat tone) MA(decreasing tone) MA(dip tone and come back up)" are 4 different words. The translator would just show "MA", and as a westerner I would have no idea how to pronounce the word from what was on the screen and got it wrong everytime. This is where I would have to show the person the Chinese characters, because they had no idea what I wanted to say. #2 The back light and speaker are cheap. I actually never had a problem with the back light, but I see why others complain. The speaker is not good enough to let locals catch the spoken inflections for Chinese.

Parting advice
I like the translator, and I will keep it for trips to Mexico and Europe, but it has a lot of features. If you get it you need to spend a few hours (even if just on the plane) reading the book and exploring the features. You need to be able to pull it out, type a phrase, and know what buttons to push to get your translation, in a few seconds for it to be effective and so you don't look dumb fumbling around with it. The translator does come with headphones so you can use it without disturbing others on a plane. Also, in China have the hotel front desk person write down where you are going (in Chinese) on a card for the taxi driver, and make sure you have a hotel business card (in Chinese) so you can hail a taxi yourself later on and make it back.

I am disappointed because it does not really "translate", although it is called "translator". It will provide you words or simple phrases from the pre-installed dictionary. For example, if you type "Where is the train station?" It will show a few phrases that start with "where". Then you will pick a sentence that is closest to what you want. Most of the time, it does not come close to my sentences. I thought it will translate like the computer translation web sites.

I think all of this type of devices in the market at this time are all like this. If any one knows a handheld device that truly translate, please let me know. I am going on a trip to Spain and need help with translation in Spanish.

Very impressed with the number of languages offered by the translator. Perhaps it would be easier to have either all male or all female translating voices. The voice quality is poor. I first attempted to listen to the translation through the speaker but had difficulty understanding and it sounded muffled and garbled. I then inserted headphones and unfortunately it was the same results. I was disappointed that it only provides pre-programmed translation. I was hopeful to enter my own phrase or sentence. It only allows you to enter word by word which defeats the purpose.

i bought this product mainly to help with my french. i am so sorry that i didn't listen to the reviewer who mentioned the inability of the translator to give the feminine or masculine form of the nouns which is so important in french. One of the most difficult lesson in french is knowing when to use "le" or "la" in front of a noun. this product is worthless to me. i played with it for 3 days and opted to buy a book. waste of money. was not cost effective to return. hopefully will be able to use if i ever travel to asia.

We got this product so that my husband could learn Spanish and use it on a recent trip to Costa Rica. This little gadget is really quite impressive in that it can store 12 languages, including Arabic. But overall it's just so-so. It's basically a computerized dictionary that has to be charged. You can look up phrases based on what you need it for: dining, shopping, health related, etc. But if you want to look up your own specific phrase, you can only look up one word at a time. Also, for the romance languages, it does not give you the gender article. For instance, if you look up "flower," it only says "flor" in Spanish. When it should read, "la flor." Kind of important if you're trying to structure a sentence. The battery life lasts a long time so you don't need to charge it often. We didn't charge it once in 8 days. If you want to store music or voice memos it has pretty good storage space. The speaking function is really neat because you can actually hear how the word or phrase is pronounced and not be left wondering. It's about the size of a deck of cards so we would just keep it in my purse. It also can convert Celsius to Fahrenheit, has a clock and alarm, so that's a plus. All in all, other than hearing the words, I'd rather use a small paper book to flip through.

While it is good. I could be much better. I was looking for a talking translator. This a talking translator but only for the phrase that are preprogrammed by Franklin. What I wanted was one that I could type my own phrase in and the would be translated for me. While this will do it you have to type each word seperately which defeat the purpose of such a device.

The Franklin TGA-495 is the perfect pocket translator for the casual traveler. It's very easy to use, has a long battery life between charges, and an expansive vocabulary in multiple languages. Good backlighting feature. Clear voice translation on most words. Very good value for the money spent. Getting the carrying case [...] is a good idea to protect the unit during travel. All-in-all, I definately recommend this translator to others.

The Franklin Electronics Speaking Global Translator TGA-495 is easy to charge and stays charged along time. Is small and the word translations worked well once I got use to the commands. I could not find a paper clip when I reset it to change languages,so used a cork screw and lost the first two letters of translations. Be careful if you reset.

We bought this for a European trip. It proved helpful in many situations. It helped us read menus, street signs and labels. It was well worth the cost.