Oct 272013
Ectaco 500AL Oxford Multi-Language Electronic Translator
- English Interface
- Advanced English TTS speech synthesis pronounces any word
- 14,000 entry Audio PhraseBook enabled with English TTS pronunciation
- English Phonetic transcription
- Instant reverse translation
Ectaco Oxford Multi-Language Electronic Dictionary
List Price: $ 249.99
Price: $ 89.99
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Doesn’t live up to expectations.,
This translator comes with about 37 language pairs already installed on a Micro SD card that comes with it. The Ectaco website makes it seem like the translator can access all the languages at will, but that isn’t possible. You can only use one language pair at a time (e.g. English to Spanish, English to Tagalog, etc). To switch to another language pair you must use go into the settings and choose “replace language pack”. This lets you access the languages on the SD card and then you choose the next language pair you want to use. Then it takes between 5-10 minutes for the translator to load the corresponding languages and dictionary. This is very lame in my opinion. The user manual doesn’t make this very clear and neither does the Ectaco website. In fact, I returned the first translator I ordered because I thought I received the wrong model, since you can only see the English to Vietnamese dictionary when you first turn on the translator. I ordered again from another seller and the same thing happened again. It took a little bit of messing around to realize I had to do the “replace language pack” function to change it to the English to Spanish dictionary like I wanted.
I haven’t used the translator much yet, but there does seem to be an extensive vocabulary and many common phrases installed for the various languages. I think the translator will suit my needs overall, but I’m just disappointed I can’t access all the languages on the fly. I only cared to have Spanish and Tagalog on the translator. Unfortunately, I can only access English-Spanish or English-Tagalog separately. I can’t look up the word in Spanish and then in Tagalog. You must load the other language for 10 minutes to access the other language, which is very inconvenient. Ectaco is guilty of false advertising with this product.
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|Ectaco 500 al translator,
Yesterday I got my new translator and started to use it. I already tried english-spanish language pair (included) and russian-spanish pair (which was downloaded from ectaco site for free). It is really excellent! The translator helps to find the word by look up function so you don`t need to write all letters of the word, he offers several options of translation, can speak in all languages. The speach is very clear. The vocabulary also includes a lot of sentences very usefull for tourists.
I am very excited!
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|Lots of languages, limited features,
I purchased the 500AL to use on a multi-country, extended trip last summer. When researching an electronic translator, I was surprised that there weren’t more options available, given our digital era. I chose this model based on the amount of languages and the speaking function. I used it in Latvia, Germany, and the Czech Republic.
The 500AL is a little wider than a smart phone and about as tall and thick. The case is a thick plastic, and the unit feels pretty solid. If you look at the image, you’ll notice that the lid is a little offset from the back of the unit. This actually alleviates tension on the joint and makes the unit more stable when opened on a table. It is a very nice design feature.
Display:
The active screen is smaller than the unit, which is indicated in the product image. There are static graphics of falling letters on either side of the screen that the image does not show. These are a little visually distracting, but not horrible. The LCD screen is very old school – monochromatic and NOT backlit. You won’t be able to read it in dim lighting. Additionally, the plastic cover on the screen is high-gloss, so bright light is an issue too. Based on the side-graphics, no backlight, and gloss, it was a bit of an effort to read the screen at times.
On the flip side, the lack of a backlight and simplicity of image causes very little drain on the battery. It is easy to forget how quickly smart phones, GPS devices, and computers die when there is no power source. I used my translator quite a bit over a 5 week period and the battery is showing 3/4 full. This is also helpful because the on/off button needs to be pushed to turn it off. Closing the cover won’t turn it off, so it could be easy to forget and leave the unit on for a period of time.
Keyboard:
It is well sized. You will need to thumb type, but it is much easier than most smart phones. The keys require a fairly firm press to work, and that was annoying for fast typing. I found I needed to backspace quite a bit from missed letters.
Note: Take the time to read the instructions before your trip or bring them with you. Some of the alternative key commands and setup options are not intuitive.
Language packs:
The 500AL comes with many, many languages on a pre-installed SD card. That was the big selling point for me. Where else could I find both Latvian and Czech in a single translator? I did not have to download anything, but I think you can if needed. I went on their website to look, but the site was incredibly confusing. You have to load each language pack from the SD card one at a time, replacing the previous one. This takes quite some time, at least a full 5 minutes, to do. So you can’t flip between multiple languages in a conversation. This didn’t bother me because I was only using one language per country.
The description does not contain the full list of languages. They are:
Albanian, Arabic, Armenian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, Estonian, Farsi, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese (Kana and Kanji), Korean, Latin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Vietnamese. (Not all languages are supported both to and from English or in TTS -see below)
Functions:
The 500AL’s dictionary is not a full sentence translator. It will only do one word at a time (there is a phrasebook however). Also, if you type certain words, like “car”, the dictionary will offer some phrases using the word that it can translate. I found the dictionary to contain more words than my pocket dictionary, and it did a pretty good job.
The phrasebook is pretty handy too. It will take you through categories to find particular phrases. It is helpful to get the category set up before you might need it.
Once the language pack is loaded, you can switch between English and the loaded language, but you have to go through the setup menu options. This was cumbersome because it required a few steps to do. It would be better to have a quick button to do this.
**Not all languages are supported in both directions! I could get English > Latvian, but I could NOT do Latvian > English! Czech and German were supported. This is contrary to the item description!
Note: If you choose a foreign language to English setting, all the menu items will be in that language! Try to familiarize yourself with menu items while in English first.
Note: When typing in a foreign language, make sure you type the non-latin letters appropriately using the alt key. The translator won’t figure it out if you use an English letter instead.
The TTS (text to speech) is useless. The voice is not the quality of GPS devices. Think 1980′s computer voice. At one point I played a translation for a vendor in Germany…
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