Learn Spanish and English with the Franklin Electronic BES-4110-01 Language Learner

Catherine Douglas: This works fine in a lot of ways, but it's got some problems. I bought it so I could look up words wherever I go, and it doesn't really work for that. But I can use it as a dictionary when I don't want to use a computer, or can't get online, and that's something.

Pluses:
- It translates Spanish to English, or English to Spanish, and it's easy to switch between the two.
- It translates most common words.
- It's a nice size, and handy to carry around.
- Most of the functions are intuitive.

Minuses:
- The screen in just about impossible to read outdoors.
- Once the battery is half used, battery messages keep popping up. Very annoying.
- When it's worried about its battery, it turns the screen illumination down so low it's almost impossible to see. I have to keep turning it back up again. It also sets the volume low, though I personally don't much care about that.
- Most of the books included are useless. The visual dictionary is small and pretty much just shows pictures with numbers. Connecting those numbers with words is hit-and-miss. There a phrasebook features, but as far as I can tell, the only useful ones are for Spanish-speakers learning...

United States on May 04, 2016

JimK - Cascade Idaho: I have owned several of these Franklin English/Spanish translators throughout the years. I find them to be extremely useful when traveling to any spanish-speaking country. You have to realize that this is a dictionary. It only does one word at-a-time. But you get a very comprehensive break-down of the word. You can see all of the verb conjugations, there are usage examples, synonyms, phrases, and with this translator it also provides a verbal pronunciation of the word.

Other things that I like:
1) Is very compact and can fit in a shirt pocket.
2) It doesn't have a flip-lid like other models. I find this to be a lot more convenient.
3) It has a bright color display
4) It takes regular aaa batteries (2 of them)
5) Easy to use
6) word games

Things I would like to see on this model that were included in previous models:
1) The backspace key on previous models would remember all of your keystrokes from the time that you turned on the unit. Backspace on this unit will only work on a word-by-word basis.
2) Older models had a feature that presented a new word each time you turned on the unit. This was configurable -- you could turn it on/off, and use...

United States on Mar 14, 2016

Nancy B.: It seems that more and more in this country we are being forced to learn Spanish. Although it is very annoying (face it for many years we have been a nation of LEGAL immigrants and the English language has held up as the language that would tie everyone together), our politicians have dumped millions of Immigrants, who really don't care about assimilating and expect US to accommodate THEIR language, with nurses, police officers,etc...being required to learn Spanish, it seems to be the time to pick up a few words. I was in a store the other day and the woman working in the women's clothing department had no idea what I was saying when I asked her something about the availability of a particular size. I have purchased a couple of apps for my iPad, but they teach as if I was in school, learning all the parts of language and I am not planning to travel to Mexico or South America, so I don't really need conversational Spanish and if I need to find something in a store again I will just use the word and let THEM try to figure out what I want.

This seems to have it all and for a great price. There are several dictionaries and books, games and for pronunciation the voice is clear...

United States on Oct 18, 2015