MobiLearn Talking Phrasebook, English-French
$34.99
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MobiLearn Talking Phrasebook Add-on: 500 Nouns, English-French
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A
talking English-French and French-English phrasebook
for the Pocket PC with pure native voices.
Add-on modules provide a total lexicon of over 2,000 key phrases and terms in
French and English.
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Advanced learning features:
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" ...A thoroughly engaging and useful piece of software...a testament to good organization...Audio quality on our Compaq iPaq was as crisp and clear as the bells of Notre Dame... the perfect add-on if you're taking your PDA along on your trip." www.techtv.com
Note:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4f68eb56-7825-43b2-ac89-2030ed98ed95&DisplayLang=en)
Key Features
- Includes the 400+ parallel English and French expressions most useful to business travelers and tourists.
- Accepts add-on modules that expand the language base to over 2,000 essential phrases and terms.
- Displays phrases in either language by topic or alphabetically.
- Quickly finds all the entries in either language that contain the words or characters you're searching for.
- Instantly shows the written translation of any chosen English phrase in French or French phrase in English.
- Speaks the translated phrase out loud in a clear native voice.
- Repeats the pronunciation automatically according to your preferences, to aid practice and memorization.
- At your option, plays all selected phrases aloud in a continuous flow.
- Saves selected phrases in a personal Bookmarks category.
- In Quiz mode, lets you test your knowledge and track your progress over time.
Latest Reviews
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A fantastic example of the versatility and power of a Pocket PC
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by Jenneth Orantia
from www.jenneth.info
on Sep 29, 2003 -
What would you rather have - a tatty old phrasebook that you have to hurriedly flip through whenever you want to form a simple sentence, often grossly mis-pronouncing the phrase and embarrassing yourself ten times over .. or a snazzy talking phrasebook on your ultra-cool Pocket PC that lets you quickly get to the phrase you're looking for and ensures that you get the pronunciation right the first time, demonstrating yourself to be a worldly and sophisticated high-class jet-setter?
I recently went to Paris for the Mobius 2003 Europe conference. Seeing as how I'd never been to a non-English speaking country before (Philippines being the exception, but I can understand Tagalog at least), I was a bit worried about going there on my own and not being able to understand the language. Enter MobiLearn's Outloud! Talking Phrasebook.
The Outloud! Talking Phrasebooks are series of bidirectional "talking" phrasebooks, available in French, German, Italian and Spanish flavours. Unlike similar software that simply displays the text translated to or from your native tongue, Outloud! also "speaks" the phrase in a very clear and pleasant sounding voice. Coming from my iPAQ 3970's sharp stereo speaker, you could be forgiven for thinking that someone in the room had spoken the phrase! The additional benefit of a talking phrasebook as opposed to just a text phrasebook is that you can be sure that you've got the pronunciation right.
For this review, I looked at the English to French/French to English phrasebook. At 13.5 MB, it's quite a large program. However with over 400 phrases, each available in French and English in mp3 format, the size is understandable. Each phrasebook is extendable, with additional modules that you can purchase for extra phrases grouped by category, such as Cuisine, Driving and Dating. I also downloaded the "Dating" module. While there's no guarantee that you'll be able to "pick up" with the additional Dating module, all the phrases that you'd need to do so are certainly included!
Installing the program
Installing the program was relatively straightforward. Due to its large size, it went straight to the storage card. Thankfully, I didn't notice any performance degradation from running it from the storage card, despite the program's large size.To install an additional module, you need to make sure that you have the main program installed first. This module then seamlessly integrates with the rest of the program, and appears as an additional category.
User interface
The Outloud! Talking Phrasebook has a very intuitive interface - I was able to open the program and immediately start using it. All of the phrases are grouped by categories and subcategories, making it easy to find the phrase that you're looking for based on the situation that you're in. So for example if you're taking public transport and are looking for a phrase that lets you buy a ticket, you can just tap on the "Transportation" category. You're then presented with a list of subcategories, each containing phrases relevant to that group.
The phrase can be played back by either double tapping on the phrase in the list, or tapping on the yellow panel. Additionally, you can set the phrase to repeat up to 9 times by tapping on the "Rep" button.
One of the things that most stood out to me about the Outloud! Talking Phrasebook was how easy it was to use. While I don't have anything against Pocket PC programs with a lot of features, the simplicity of Outloud!'s design is extremely refreshing. All of the program's features can be accessed from the bottom bar, as opposed to being buried within menus and options settings.
Features
As previously mentioned, the phrasebooks are bidirectional. This means that you can select the phrases in English, view the translated text in French and have it spoken in French through your Pocket PC's speaker, or vice versa. Changing the direction of the translation is very easily done by changing the languages at either end of the arrow.
There's also a search mechanism that lets you quickly look up phrases rather than having to navigate through the different categories and sub-categories. The ability to access the translated phrase directly from within the search window (rather than being taken back to the main part of the program) makes this feature much more powerful, and can be used as an alternate means to using the program. A feature I would like to see is the ability to see recent searches, by way of a drop down from the find text box.
Comprehensiveness
While the Outloud! Talking Phrasebook is by no means a substitute for a comprehensive foreign language dictionary, I see it as more of a complement. Yes, there are some phrases that you may want to use that you won't find in the phrasebook. But depending on the obscurity of the phrase that you wish to use, you can usually find a close equivalent in the phrasebook. For example, the phrase "Can you tell me when we get there, please?" isn't really practical for me - I would rather a phrase "Can you tell me when we get to [insert name of town here], please?". But the phrases are usually close enough that you can make do.Wishlist
Even though the program is extremely stable, I'm not a big fan of embedded VB programs. Uninstalling another eVB program means that I can no longer run the phrasebook. Using programs like VBRegFix helps, but it's still a nuisance.A feature that I would like to see in the next version is a "Favourites" category, where you can copy and paste phrases that you can see yourself using on a regular basis. Rather than having to navigate to the phrase that you want to use through the categories, you could then go directly to the Favourites section. Using this program in a "real world" setting means being able to get to the phrases as quickly as possible. Having a hotel clerk wait for 5 minutes while you fumble around with your Pocket PC trying to find the phrase you want to use isn't exactly an ideal scenario. Another possible feature would be a "Recently used phrases" category. While I can't see myself using all of the phrases in the phrasebook, I do see myself using the same basic phrases over and over again. The ability to quickly look up a phrase that I used the day before, rather than having to remember what category it was in (or have to do a search on it) is another valuable time-saver.
Conclusion
Having this talking phrasebook at my disposal made me much more confident at attempting to speak French while I was in Paris. Admittedly, my French repetoire was pretty much limited to "Bonjour", "Merci" and "Oui, s'il vous plait", but on the rare occasions that I was feeling adventurous enough to say anything other than that, the ability to quickly look up the phrase and have the correct pronunciation spoken back to me was a God send.Outloud! Talking Phrasebooks are a fantastic example of the versatility and power of a Pocket PC. If you're travelling to a French, German, Italian or Spanish-speaking country and you can't speak the language, then an Outloud! Talking Phrasebook is a must-have. Even if you're not travelling to a different country and just want learn a few phrases in a different language, the ability to hear the phrases spoken in the correct pronunciation is better than any language teacher - because you don't have to pay them by the hour, can learn the phrases at your own convenience and can have it repeat the phrase endlessly until you get it right. Not to mention it being much cheaper, and also being very, very cool having such a thing on your Pocket PC.
Posted by Jenneth - May 11, 2003
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Check your language level first
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by a reviewer
from UK
on Jan 20, 2003 - I found this phrase tool well beneath my language level. I'd say it's O'level at best so just make sure it's not too simple for you before you buy it !
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This is simply the premier PocketPC language assistant.
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by Ron Miller
from Indianapolis, IN USA
on Oct 15, 2001 - If you are not fluent in French and need help communicating in French, this program is a wonderful assistant. It has an excellent design and is very easy to use. And the included MP3 files that provide audible translations by simply tapping on the translated phrase is sheer genius. I also bought the Spanish version. Highly recommended.
Download Details
- File Information
- 3 min download @ 300Kb/s
- 6.8MB Installed
- Updated 9/29/2009
- Features
Handango Mobile Ready
Color application- Minimum Requirements
- Any Pocket PC 2003 or Windows Mobile device with 14 MB of free memory.
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