Trinvo's Talking Translator: 12 Languages In the Palm of Your Hand
Imagine you had a device that could translate for you- and even speak the phrases out loud in a clear voice. No worrying about accents, no more playing charades with your cab driver in Istanbul, and fewer phrasebooks and dictionaries to purchase (and carry)! And it plays hangman and will even help with currency and metric conversions!
It’s the Trinvo TR01, from Nomenta, a Danish-Chinese company with an eye for design and both electronic and kitchen items. About the size of an iPhone or iPod Touch but thicker, it runs on two AAA batteries- handy for travel since you don’t need to worry about voltage converters then. With an attractive interface that mimics the click wheel, it’s made to allow you to quickly find and play the phrase that you need. And with languages including English, Mandarin Chinese, German, Arabic, French,
Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian, you can cross-translate between any of them pretty handily.
Basically, you can choose from about 750 commonly used sentences, things like “Is there a museum nearby” or “Please call me a taxi” or “Can you show it to me on the map”. And you can select the output language, then play the phrase in your desired tongue. If you find yourself “saying” the same thing often, you can save that phrase as a bookmark or favorite and have it more easily accessible. We liked the battery life and solid design, but felt mixed about the actual voice files. Some sounded excellent, but though we aren’t native speakers of nearly any of them, a few sounded less clear or distinct than others.
We were also less than thrilled about the screen. Sure, this is a device that is supposed to do the talking for you, but the small, dark screen made for a bit of an awkward time. Also, everything is broken down into eight categories, and they make sense, but tags would be simpler. And being forced to carry the manual/guide around to serve as a quick glossary- allowing you to find the phrase in English and then the appropriate code number to use- somewhat destroyed the point of a lightweight, self-contained unit.
Overall though, it has promise. Translation apps for the iPhone are useful, but definitely limited. and we liked the lack of need for additional fees, charges, or cellular/internet access. Pricing is hard to pin down, as the item doesn’t appear to be available on almost any shopping site nor from the manufacturer themselves- but we saw a price of about $60 at one point, which is a pretty good deal. We anxiously await the TR02, which is said to be coming soon in 2008, not a great sign.
