I have been looking at buying a pocket translator, but have found that (as you would expect) most are aimed at Chinese folk learning English, and not the other way round.
For example, if you are searching for the Chinese equivalent of an English word you will be given a whole load of characters and be very unsure of which is the correct set you are looking for.
Are there any machines out there that are designed more for English speakers learning Chinese?
THe BESTA CD606 seems to ba very popular model with the locals. Has anyone got one of these?
[quote=“olison”]I have been looking at buying a pocket translator, but have found that (as you would expect) most are aimed at Chinese folk learning English, and not the other way round.
For example, if you are searching for the Chinese equivalent of an English word you will be given a whole load of characters and be very unsure of which is the correct set you are looking for.
Are there any machines out there that are designed more for English speakers learning Chinese?
THe BESTA CD606 seems to ba very popular model with the locals. Has anyone got one of these?[/quote]
I’m not so sure I understand what you’re talking about. If you’re referring to electronic dictionaries, then there are already a few threads about that.
I’ve been wondering the same thing about a Mandarin-English pocket electronic translater… All previous conversations, just searched it, have only talked about the ectaco (= expensive mail order only) or super old ones.
Anyone out there try some of the Mandarin-speaker-orientated ones like Besta brand? Can an english speaker use them easily enough? Are there any where the menus can be converted to english, or at least come with an english manual? ANY info would be useful.
Have been playing around with the BESTA CD 606, all my Chinese friends seem to have one. It has a colour touch pad screen and you can draw characters on it. It goes for around 6500-7000
It’s pretty good, and quite simple to use, has both PinYin and BoPoMoFo. You can set it up in English and the help files are good. The problem I have noticed is that sometimes (not all the time) when you are looking for English word meanings - it is unclear as to what the correct characters are for that particular meaning.
I can’t remember all the names of the ones I was looking at whats it called, guangzhou?!, in Shilin, it was quite a few months ago. But I just checked out the Besta CD-608, looks sweeet, but super expensive :raspberry: I’d love to have the color screen, but funcionality and price are more important. Know of any other brands besides Besta that cross over for english speakers?
Sorry to drag this thread up, but I want to buy one of these little gadgets if I can find one suitable. Are there any other brands/models that will suit a foreigner? Pinyin input and translations to Chinese with pinyin and characters would be nice. How do you set one up for that?
Also, a while ago I read somewhere (here or elsewhere I can’t remember-- and can’t find it) that someone had a palm pilot or something similar and had downloaded the Concise English Chinese dictionary onto it, complete with audio pronunciation. Any ideas on how to do that? Also would one of those fancy new (probably expensive) palm/cell phones do this as well?
I use the Besta CD-606 and love it. You can set it for a number of popular input methods, including (most importantly for me, that is) Hanyu Pinyin and Radical-Stroke. I’ve been using Bestas for years because I find their quality and ease of use the best.
It’s not without its flaws. For one, after you look up the meaning of a phrase, pressing the escape key brings you back to the original dictionary entry screen rather than the previous screen you had been looking at. It means that you have to re-input characters if you want to look again at the list of words beginning with that character.
In addition, I’ve found some flaws in definitions and even a few spelling mistakes.
Also, the keys aren’t sensitive enough for really rapid input, but they are more sensitive than my last Besta, the DC-67.
Also, a feature older versions had, which is missing on this one: if you entered a character with the wrong tone, pressing an arrow key would display characters with other tones. This useful feature is not present in CD-606 as far as I can tell, meaning that if you input the wrong tone you wuill have to re-enter the character.
Still, this Besta blows away anything else I’ve ever seen.
[quote=“TS”]Also, a while ago I read somewhere (here or elsewhere I can’t remember-- and can’t find it) that someone had a palm pilot or something similar and had downloaded the Concise English Chinese dictionary onto it, complete with audio pronunciation. Any ideas on how to do that? Also would one of those fancy new (probably expensive) palm/cell phones do this as well?[/quote]The software company is Pleco; pleco.com/products.html
At the moment they have the Oxford Concise English & Chinese Dictionary for Palm OS. They will very soon have John DeFrancis’ ABC Chinese-English Dictionary and the English-Chinese Pinyin Dictionary by New World Press (these are available now but only as preview release).
I think Pleco will release this software for the Pocket PC OS soon.
No audio samples though. I know Pinyin so it’s no problem for me. If you’re not so familiar with the sounds of Mandarin you might prefer one of those all-in-one dictionaries with a speaker. But then you won’t be able to do all the other useful stuff you can do with a PDA.
If you have a Palm or Pocket PC, have a look at Livingosoft. I bought the ECTACO English <-> Chinese Traditional Partner Dictionary for Pocket PC for a mere US$ 9.95 some time ago (this promotion has now ended, but read below). It allows input through pinyin or by radical and - if you have a software like Monster SIP - you can even input Chinese characters.
Now here’s something interesting I just found out: If you put a product in the shopping cart and then click on the “back” button or if you remove the product again, there’s a pop up window coming up asking you how much you’d be willing to pay. As I said, I paid 9.95 US$, so maybe they would accept this price (currently, they have a 25% discount, so you’d pay 14,95 instead of 19,95).
Be careful with some of the other items, the talking dictionaries can talk in English only while the phrasebook can talk in Chinese, but shows only the characters and no pinyin (of course, you could copy the characters into the dictionary to get the pinyin ). Anyway, my Chinese is too poor to judge the quality of the Dictionary, but I found it to be very useful to look up some words or pronunciations I had forgotten. Definitely worth the price.
). Anyway, my Chinese is too poor to judge the quality of the Dictionary, but I found it to be very useful to look up some words or pronunciations I had forgotten. Definitely worth the price. 