Talking electronic translators

[brett]

I can't remember the brand of translator my girl has but it seemed to be a PDA with a knock off version of Windows Mobile on it. The translations were as good as the ones you get out of Google (for better or for worse!) I guess that at the heart of every English/Chinese translator is the same 3rd party software. Well apart from the Babelfish translator, which is laughably bad.

Her translator only had a Chinese gui but I could remember the things to press to get the English > Chinese mode.

If you have a decent mobile phone you can probably get translator software for it, so that might be a different approach.

[Buzz]

Here in Beijing and purchased a Besta yesterday for just over 800RMb.  Since my lady does not type, this is able to take her hand written mandrin and translate to english.  It is also able to attach this to an e-mail and we can translate with out the cost of EMF.  To date, it is very good, easy to use and will also read written english and translate.  Over all extremely satisified with the product and price.  Had Betty our translator along and she was able to verify the accuracy of the translation.

buzz

[brett]

Wow, that's a good price for a translator. My lady's non-brand thing cost more than that. It does the handwriting recognition, but to use that you really have to know your stroke orders!!!!

If your lady doesn't know pinyin there are several different methods of entering characters. I don't know if the machines understand them though. I know that it seemed to take forever for my lady to draw all the characters for a sentence.