 | |  | | | Ectaco EJ800 English & Japanese Bidirectional Talking Electronic Dictionary & Audio PhraseBook | | | | | SKU:
Ectaco-EJ800-B000HHAZMY | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 2-3 business days | | | | | | Features Superior English and Japanese speech recognition. An additional advantage of this function is that you can use it to test your pronunciation. Designed for the serious traveler the Audio PhraseBook is useful for both pleasure or business trips. It provides real human voice output in English and Japanese for over 14 000 travel-oriented phrases. It also displays the responses you can expect to your questions in the 'You May Hear' section Expandable vocabulary: over 450 000 words included in the general dictionary one of our largest vocabularies ever! Any you can easily add more than 50 other language combinations that are available as ECTACO MMC Cards! Advanced English and Japanese speech synthesis. Instant reverse translation. Hi-resolution adjustable color touch-screen that displays color-coded parts of speech samples of use and more! | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Product Weight: | 2.0 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 4 reviews |
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| | Features | Superior English and Japanese speech recognition. An additional advantage of this function is thatDesigned for the serious traveler the Audio PhraseBook is useful for both pleasure or businessExpandable vocabulary: over 450 000 words included in the general dictionary one of our largestAdvanced English and Japanese speech synthesis. Instant reverse translation.
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 4 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 found the following review helpful:
Save your money May 13, 2008
By He'enalu
"Jiefurii"
I was very disappointed with this dictionary. First, the battery does not hold a charge for very long. According to the manufacturer this is normal. It must be recharged every two weeks or the battery goes dead. The translations are often spelled differently than most Romanji dictionaries, e.g. "konnichiha" instead of "konnichiwa". Although technically the spelling is correct, it is not a common spelling anymore. Many of the words are poorly translated. The same company makes a very inexpensive translator that does several languages that is more than adequate for travel. If you are looking to learn Japanese, look elsewhere for a translator. I have purchased superior English-Chinese electronic dictionaries and sentence translators for far less than this costs.
6 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Don't waste your money - sham product and sham company Jun 06, 2008
By S. Thompson
As with the above reviewer, I also received a defective product. I ordered this through Unbeatable Sales, (which could also use some improvement in customer service, but that's a whole other review...) and it arrived several days before my trip to Japan.
When I opened it up and pressed the 'on' button, the device turned on and prompted me to calibrate the screen, as with many touch screen devices. After calibrating the four corners and the center, the device simply froze. Every button pressed responded with a "beep" and would do nothing. Even the on/off button wouldn't work! I had to power it off by removing the battery.
Next, I powered it back on and decided to skip the screen calibration part by pressing "skip calibration". After touching this choice, the device froze again. And again I had to remove the battery to turn the device off; the on/off button responded with a "beep" just like every other button pressed on the device.
After repeating this several times, removing batteries and using just AC power, etc., I realized the product was defective. Unfortunately, my departure for japan was the next day, and I am here now without a translator, which would have been extremely helpful. A trip to Akihabara yielded plenty of translators, but all of them made for Japanese speakers looking to translate into English, as the buttons are in Japanese.
The first thing that jumped out at me and was probably a harbringer of things to come, was the numerous disclaimers on the front page of the manual, basically stating that Ectaco is not liable for anything. My confidence in this product took a sharp turn downward after reading that and sure enough, the device wouldn't work. Since I am out of the country for 3 months, I am sure I will have problems trying to get service or restitution for this once I return. I simply left the device on my kitchen counter before I left, seeing as how it was pretty much useless. And my product was priced at $489, purchased before the present price cut of $100.
Lastly and most importantly, this is not a "translator" as in the way that you can go on to babelfish and type in a paragraph and have the results translated for you into your language of choice. This is an electronic dictonary and a phrasebook. I actually knew this before my purchase, but I just want to explicitly point this out for those considering this type of device. This device can: 1.) translate specific English words into Japanese, with the corresponding kanji/hiragana/katakana/romanji, and 2.) provide specific phrases for specific situations, e.g. "Where is the bathroom" and "Officer, that sumo wrestler over there stole my pants". These phrases cannot be modified in the "translator". There are a couple thousand of them, but again, they are specific to situations, i.e. you look up your specific situation and you get a list of phrases to chose from.
My experience with this device is kind of commensurate with my overall experience with buying anything other than books from Amazon. Many of these online retailers selling through Amazon are starting to become really shady in their customer service dealings. And it seems to be getting worse, in my opinion. Henceforth, I will only buy books off of Amazon, and buy other items greater than $100 from brick-and-mortar businesses. The cost savings are not really worth too much if I have to chance getting a defective and unreturnable product.
So to summarize, all of these "translating" devices are essentially the same in my humble opinion. You get a phrase book and a language dictionary. The value add for the price differences primarily revolves around more words/phrases, and the extra stuff like an mp3 player, currency converter, calendar, etc. Odds are, if you have any run-of-the mill cellphone, you won't need these add-ons to your language device. So save your money and just buy a simple translator and phrasebook.
Oh, and stay away from Ectaco. It seems their products are very unreliable.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
FAULTY PRODUCT Dec 02, 2006
By Chicadita
I am about to return my second translator to the company, which, by the way, has VERY strict rules regarding returns so be careful. The first unit froze up on the first day of use. Parts of menus remained on the screen and I had to pull the battery out to re-set it because it wouldn't turn off. My second unit came out of the box with only 1/2 of the screen working, the other 1/2 is white. It looks like it works other than the screen, but still, for that much money they shouldn't fail on the first day out of the box!
 It's OK... Jun 16, 2010
By Katie Skapin
This product is OK, but not great.
Pros:
-The phrases that are included are really useful in situations... they provide customizable example sentences that you can actually use in a situation.
-The speech feature can be helpful when trying to pronounce difficult words or phrases.
-The touchscreen is a nice feature and can assist in navigating the menus.
-You can customize the colors of the menus and the layout of some of the items.
-The included flash card software is really convenient for memorizing vocabulary words.
-The ability to make a list of favorite words is nice when using certain words frequently.
Cons:
-Kind of bulky and not exactly pocket-sized.
-The entry is difficult (i.e.- sometimes a button won't register that you've pressed it, the hirigana on the buttons is small and hard to find).
-The battery does NOT hold a charge decently. With maybe 2 hours of use a day, I would need to charge it every day to every-other-day.
-Sometimes the menus freeze up or lag.
-You need to have some basis of radicals in order to use the kanji look up.
The bottom line:
It's a good translator for doing more "book work" than actual speaking/ on-the-go translating.
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