Franklin TG-450 12 Language Translator

I was sooooo excited to receive the Franklin TG-450 12 Language Translator, that as soon as it came in the mail, I immediately opened it and followed the instructions to begin using this language translator. Boy was I surprised when NONE of the words of phrases I typed in the translator to be translated from English to German were in there! Simple words like eat, bathroom, dog, cat.... you know, the things we need to find our way in another country! Well, needless to say, I returned the product the very next day and I guess I will be going to Germany without a language translator--wish me luck!

Now this item I don't know about and I hope I wasn't charged for it because I did not order this one.

I bought this translator to my wife for initial studies and at first use she tried to translate a simple sentence from Portuguese to English. It did not work. Of course it could be a difficult one, ok, tried once again with a simpler sentence. Once more the device took a long time to say "cannot help". Then she tried to use simple words and in about 10 tries it found 2 or 3 words and it was very difficult to understand their meanings, as the device proposed a lot of possible matches which did not even have to do with the word she typed. As I am proficient in both languages I tried myself. I stopped after a few tries, as the results were getting worse. It does not seem the internal dictionary is poor, but the matching algorithm is not smart enough for this device. It takes a long time to identify it cannot help on the required translation and it does not help on very basic sentences, which was the first need of my wife. I returned the product and fortunately Amazon had gave me back the money with no issues. I was looking for something cheap and useful, but it was only cheap. Might help on other languages, but I guess newer devices might help more who need it for studying.

I got this for my boyfriend who dabbles in a number of European languages but is fluent in none. I thought the simple vocabulary would supplement what he already knows and help him figure things out without flipping through a dictionary.So far it hasn't proven to be very useful. The vocabulary of this gadget isn't too small, but it's remarkably strange. I tried looking up a few relatively simple conversational terms in Russian and got no results for several of them. Then I jokingly tried "sausage" and got upwards of 10 results, mostly dishes made with sausage and different kinds of sausage. So, not too useful but could be nice if you're eating out in a foreign country. Maybe that's what they were going for?As far as ease of use goes, it's simple enough. The little games are sort of nice for people learning languages. I've been using the hangman game to practice my Russian spelling.Overall: I wouldn't recommend it very highly. You get what you pay for and nothing more.

If you need very basic expressions and vocabulary and you need to translate into different languages, then this may be for you.I purchased this as an economical German-, Dutch-, French-, and Spanish - English dictionary (It has 12 languages in all). With this I can look up some very common words - and I can see expressions using those words to boot. This is very nice and convenient for me.Sadly, I tend to be fairly demanding of translators and will frequently come across words that most electronic dictionaries don't have. The word reminiscence - or anything like it is not there, for example and there are many such examples you will find. {For this, I will use more elaborate electronic dictionaries, or better yet, a big book!}For those of us who use the Russian dictionary: The Russian keyboard is inconvenient, to put it mildly! Picture a standard keyboard but not QWERTY, rather ABCDEF. I think it would drive most of us nuts. (The ENGLISH keyboard is perfectly normal). On the postive side, the translator DOES offer Russian!All-in-all, for the price and for translating into many, many languages, I think it is pretty good. If you're going to travel to many different countries and you need info on those languages, I think you'll like this. I do. If you're a native English speaker like me and you're about to read War and Peace in the original Russian, you REALLY need to look elsewhere!

I was very disappointed with this product because its currency conversion is for Deutsche Marks. The current official currency for Germany are Euros now. If the product description had listed the conversion was for Deutsche Marks I would not have purchased this particular product, so I feel the description was a little misleading. I would have paid more for a device that had the ability to convert the USD to the Euro. So I am stuck with a product that I am unhappy with. I'd love to exchange this for the product that I really need.

I have a Franklin spell check and have used it for years. The Franklin products are outstanding and I am pleased to give this translator to my granddaughter for Christmas. I know she will use it for a long time to come.Franklin TG-450 12 Language Translator

It seemed logic that this 12 language translator would be a very useful device in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic for a tourist who speaks only English. The device was of help on only two occasions during the entire twelve days spent in these three countries. The most frequent response when trying to determine the meaning of a German, Austrian or Czech word or expression was. "Sorry, can't help." The list of English phrases to be translated into one of the other languages took too long to sort through to be of any practical value. The same information in the form of a printed handbook would have been ever so much more useful.