FranklinTES-118 English/Spanish Translator

This product is fun to use and increases my confidence in speaking and writing Spanish. I recommend it to everyone who wishes to improve their communication skills. I especially value the sleek design, compact size, and portability of the 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 displayin any lighting, and the button(s) you need to use the most areso 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 isyour e-mail address? Why would a non-spanish speaking personneed that??? If you want to know where you can find a chineserestaurant, you will need to look up each word individually, and then find out that "chinese" isn't in the database. So, have apencil and paper ready to construct your own clumsy sentences.I gave it one star because it's better than having nothing. Ifyou were going to dash to Mexico for the weekend, this would getyou through. It's not user intuitive so expect to have to readthe booklet to find out how to capitalize a letter, as well asusing any/all of the functions. It's complicated, it's limited,it's difficult to navigate. On the upside - you'll know whattime it is! There's a name & phone number database - it wouldbe a lot nicer to just be able to take a note - like what streetyour hotel is on - or write down frequently used expressions ofyour own instead of having to look up "What is the specialtoday?" every night at dinner. But, if your wife is pregnant,goes into labor and you're panicking - this little gizmo willcome to your rescue. It's got that covered. A pocket dictionarywould be faster and more helpful.

well it does what it says but not very intutive, given the fact that now smart phones do so much and beyond. I wanted this for my cuba trip since there is no internet connectivity there, however, i used to fumble - it takes getting used to, and so i switched to old fashioned print outs of most commonly used tourist phrases and questions

It has a lot of words and the size is good.

It was easy to understand the instructions, and I did use it a bit on my trip (back to my old Peace Corps site where I wasn't sure how my Spanish would be after 3 years away - as long as I was there), but the amount of vocab I found lacking. It said words didn't exist or tried correcting them. I was hoping for more.I like the thermometer converter though!Great size, easy to carry. Reliable battery, and I wasn't worried about it breaking (like a previous one I had). I wouldn't buy it again for my purposes, but it might work just fine for someone else.

I have had three Franklin pocket translators in the past 15 years. This is the worst. Some common words in both English and Spanish are not recognized by this unit. The screen is smaller that the first two so that I have to cycle through vertically or horizontally to view a complete verb form or definition. The only positive is that it contains nouns. The first two showed almost exclusively verbs. I should have bought the next unit up.

got this for my grand daughter. It has been so helpful with her studies. She is actually learning a lot

The screen is too small, many messages require (slow) expansion by the arrow buttons. The keys stick and do not rebound. I have tried several common words that it does not recognize, such as "mule." The instructions are meager: printed crookedly on one side of one piece of paper. No instructions for the date, not even mentioned, and just runes continuously from 14-01-2001 but never caches up. It is basically useless and a total waste of money no matter how little that may be.

It did not work as received.

Pros. Small, neat, light and easy to carry.Cons. It has a limited bank of words and phrases and the small screen makes navigation between phrases frustratingly slow and difficult. Particularly if you are in a hurry to search for just the right words you need.

works well

On the plus side this gadget is good value for money. It is small and lightweight and ideal for travel or to supplement Spanish lessons.On the minus side I would suggest that the hinge could have been made a bit stronger. In the wrong hands it wouldn`t last very long.I would also critisize the packaging of the item. I went three rounds, two falls and a submission before I managed to get it open.But it was worth it in the end.

I thought I could use it as a dictionary when I was reading a spanish written book but it was useless for this purpose.