Disclaimer: I once worked there.

These guys had the creme-de-la-creme of electronic translation products in their collins and larousse english 2 otherlanguage dictionaries (french, spanish, german, etc.)

I see on www.franklin.com they are now offering shit like "serbo-croatian", which boggles the mind on a "can you sell more than two of these" basis.

Regardless, look for them in stores, and give them a try.

Things to look out for:

- BEWARE of "phrase translators" - they have useful info, but little ability to go outside the 5,000 phrases built in to the product.

- OTOH, having "phrases" or "idiomatic expressions" built into a dictionary product is fine.

- How hard/easy is it to switch languages. That is, you type 'hablo' and it says 'I speak', and you say 'oh, no, I want a translation of 'to tell'" and need to switch from
span->eng to eng->span mode. This happened to me all the time, when I was trying to find exactly the right word. Being able to switch quickly is a must-have feature for me.

- Handling funny characters (like accents, tilde): Does it show them? Does it let you type them? Does it REQUIRE you to type them (this is bad)?

- Automatic handling of inflection (can it figure out what fue means? How about hablamos?)

- Can you "cross-reference" words. That is, if you do a "lookup" and see an example sentence, can you look up other words in the example sentence with ease?

- Spell correction. Can it figure out what ablamis was supposed to be?

- Try to stay with 'pocket sized' if possible. The bigger units generally just have bigger keyboards (which may be a win for you, if you have fat fingers). (Also, the pocket units with lithium batteries tend to last quite a while.)

- Look for variable-sized fonts, if your vision isn't what it could be.

- Avoid "speaking" products. They seem cool, but you will rarely use them, since you've got a willing speaker sitting in your lap.

Please do use words other than hablar to test these things. I just pulled that one out as an example.

Also, there is NO substitute for playing with one of these before you buy it. If you absolutely must buy one blind, I'd recommend Franklin's products.

Dem Gnomes

Does anybody out there have a Franklin SCD-1870 http://www.franklin.com/estore/details.aspx?ID=SCD-1870

or Franklin BES-1850 http://www.franklin.com/estore/details.aspx?ID=BES-1850
Language translator/dictionaries?

I am looking to buy one for travel and work.

RG.