Customer Reviews

Universal Translator Deluxe

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

To say I was disappointed with this purchase would be an understatement. I bought it in the full belief that it would actually help me to translate e-mail and websites as the packaging said. Unfortunately, the packaging is entirely misleading and should be mostly disregarded. You will not be able to successfully translate full sentences with anything approaching ease. This is mostly a word-by-word translator, and significant knowledge of the target language--and its grammar--is required to be able to pull off reasonable translations.

I must say that I found the Spanish translations competent, but this was because I know Spanish and therefore could make informed choices when the program prompted me for word choice.

And this is where the strength of the program is. It does actually help you if you know your target language well enough to multiple guess your way through a series of choices.

But is that really a strength? It seems to me that the goal of any product which calls itself 'Universal Translator' should be to fully automate the translation process, not give you a multiple choice quiz about a language you don't know.

Now I've read reviews which apologize for this by saying that all computer language translation packages make draft translations only, and that you really should have someone who knows the language to write the final form. Perhaps so. But this product depends so much on user knowledge of the language that you need someone with those language skills long before the draft stage.

Truth is, there are other packages which, despite making what might be called 'draft translations', at least translate whole sentences. The problem whith packages like that is that they don't translate nearly so many languages, nor are they cheap. Indeed, there are many languages this product translates that aren't translated by anyone else.

This product is thus recommendable in a limited way. If you basically know a langauge, but can't trust yourself to translate lengthy documents, this product might eventually steer you to an acceptable translation. Also, if you really need to translate into Slovak or one of the other lesser-known languages, this may be your only hope.

Still, I can't help remembering what language teachers have told me in the past: never translate using a dictionary as your primary reference because you'll end up making crazy word choices and not even know it. Be warned: for all its packaging hype, Universal Translator is just an interactive dictionary.

I own a small motel and bought this software to use to give our Spanish speaking employees instructions. When I could get the software to work the employees could not understand the Spanish translations. It also was not compatable with the reservation software that I use and blew it off my computer. I had to reload the reservation software after loading the language translator. Then when I shut the computer down at night it blew my reservation software off again. The technical support was absolutely useless. The only thing they would offer was a program for over $200 that they said would work better. When I tried to get my money back I was told to forget it. Don't buy this unless you have money to throw into the trash.

I found this software pathetic for use with the Slavic languages. Some of the most basic words such as 'good' in Slovak could not be translated. In Czech, 'good' tranlated into 'best'. Totally forget translation of sentences, it cannot do single words. For some reason translation into Russian would show up as Spanish. The speech synthesis was so bad it was actually funny. It apparently uses English phonetics no matter what language is being translated. This results is completely unrecognizable speech. If I hadn't received a full refund from COMPUSA, I would be very upset right now. By the way, don't expect any sympathy from the developer.

I bought it mainly to assist in translation of my rusty Spanish. I spend more time updating the dictionary when I use it than I do actually translating with it. There's no throwing away your language dictionaries with this program.

This is a terrible product which does not even remotely do what it claims. After a lot of time and effort, you will end up with translations that are useless. Documents translated into Spanish and German were found to be so poorly done as to be laughable. Those who speak the languages found the translations rediculous. This is a bad product which should not even be considered.

It's too complicated and too time consuming to use. I read the other reviews about only being able to translate one word at the time...I'm impressed. I can't even get that far. And on top of all of that, they were supposed to send me a rebate...but it's been 4 months since I sent in my paperwork. Now I can't even get their stupid little rocket icon from showing up twice on my opening page and interfering with another language program (that actually works!). Save your money!

I purchased this same program through compuserve. I never received my rebate. I found it difficult to use and the people I sent the messages to responded in english that the messages I sent in their language was indecipherable

The worst piece of software I have ever used. Totally misleading. Does not come close to working as advertised. I don't believe this program is intended to work. It looks like a come on to purchase "advanced" versions and make you spend more money. Don't even consider this program.

I bought it through a promotion from AOL and I want my money back!

I bought the Deluxe version of this product for the Korean translations. I have never had problems and when I tested it in Korean, I typed a complicated sentence and asked my wife(who is full blooded Korean, little english skills) what it said, she stated exactly what I typed. I hid what I typed so she did not know. When I asked about the level two for the deluxe version, they sent me the level 2 Korean at cost but stated that my deluxe was outdated for that level and sent me a full version of 2000 without extra cost. I did not know at the time what had happened and questioned them on it. They said it was not a mistake, the updated 2000 version was compliments for purchasing their product. Even the ocr works great with every peripheral I have installed. My only complaint was, that you have to use an American OS to install so I could not give the extra copies to my niece(korean) no english skills since she has Korean windows. The rebate that they offered to me was for a free level two version of any language I wanted, which I got in Japanese since some korean is based on japanese/chinese. It even gave me access to the chinese at no extra cost. This was for the deluxe version but would release in 2000 as well. I am surprised to hear of all the problems everyone else has had. I own several Korean language programs and this one is the best in translations. Korean is very hard to write translation programs for but this one did alot more than I expected. I just wish they could come up with a level 3 like the other languages but being in Korea, I know how hard that is. Even the Koreans have had trouble creating a language translator until recently. Within the last few months but even that is still touristy, not business-like.