Franklin Electronic Publishers BES-1890 Speaking S

Spanish Translator
Received this product a few days ago and my daughter (who is a sophmore in High School) says it helps her learn Spanish. Overall, I found the product a little expensive once I had it in my hands. I was not able to turn the volume up very loud. I even saw my daughter putting it to her ear to hear the words. Second, it did not have a Backlite for ease of reading. To read the words on the screen, you had to put it under a light. For the amount of money it cost, I assumed it would have that.On the good side, it does come with many applications. She was able to put her vocabalary words in the unit and it would help her spell and translate each of them.Overall, I am a little disappointed with the product. The sound could have been better and a backlit LCD would have been an improvement. However, as long as my daughter is happy with the product and she is using it for her Spanish class; then I am happy and will not tell her how disappointed I am with it.

Excellent product
Despite several bad reviews, I purchased this product after losing my Franklin BES-1850. I started using Franklin English-Spanish dictionaries over ten years ago and they have proved to be very beneficial in learning Spanish. This one is no exception. Some reviews said the sound wasn’t loud enough; mine is perfect. One complained about the screen being too small; mine is more than adequate. Some complained about it not having a backlight; although it is convenient, it is not necessary. I would tell anyone who is considering buying this to go ahead and buy it. You won’t regret it.

Reset problems
I have used several Franklin translators over the years. On the whole, I find them very good. There are two problems, however, that seem to follow all of their problems. The first is that the machine resets itself very often. This means all of my words on the “word list” are lost. Not a big deal, but when I find a word I really want to learn, I like to add it to the word list. Then I can review the list from time to time hoping I will eventually learn it. This is really frustrating as the machine seems to reset quite often. This always happens with a change in batteries.On the whole the dictionary is great. Swear words are omitted …. understandable for minors, but not needed for adults. (A real shame when I read “Cincuenta sombras de Gray”) However, the dictionary is very bad with adverbs, that end in “mente” I am rarely able to find a translation. You can shorten the word to another form, but the adverbs seem to be omitted.

Disappointed in Audio function and quality
I think how much you like this product will depend on how you’d like to use it. I purchased it because it was a SPEAKING Spanish-English dictionary. What I wanted to do, was leave it on my kitchen counter and when I saw an object that I didn’t know the name of, I’d go and type in the English word, see the Spanish word and be able to hear it said out loud. I thought that would be a great learning tool. But, it doesn’t really work that way. I selected the English to Spanish “book”(not the term I expected) and typed in a word and saw Spanish definitions, but the default action for reading, was to read back to me the word I had typed in (the ENGLISH word). The process for trying to hear the Spanish word was not particularly intuitive and it did not seem to always offer me an option to hear the primary Spanish definition. Then when I had jumped through the hoops to have read out loud the Spanish word, it was Robo-Spaniard reading them — this did not sound like a person. The sound quality is poor. I finally found an iPhone app that does what I want and I’ll have to use that, though that’s not really the solution I wanted, since I wanted to just leave a device open and ready to type in a word and get the translation. Franklin (the manufacturer) can’t you do better than this??

The only problem is that the back where the batteries are fitted kept falling off and I am afraid of loosing it. I living in Barbados.

For the price, this is a fantastic product and I find the build quality perfectly acceptable. It comes with a basic cover case and a pair of headphones.Advantages:Unlike cheaper products this has a very large database of words and far more phrases which means unlike my old French-English dictionary I’m not left resorting to a paper dictionary for half the words I want to look up. It does of course miss some modern slang and regional vocabulary and is not quite as comprehensive as I would like but it’s not bad.The screen size and ease of use make it pleasurable to use.It takes 2 x AAA batteries (not included), so I can use my existing rechargeables.This also has all the verb conjugations and synonyms so is a useful reference (you have to keep pressing the Conjugate button to toggle through these – took me a while to realise!). Admittedly, you can also get all that for free on the internet, so its primary use for me is for looking up words when reading good old paper books, magazines & newspapers in Spanish. It’s a lot more convenient than a laptop for that!Disadvantages:There is no lid and the case is basically a thin piece of fabric so doesn’t offer much protection (it doesn’t even close in any way) – so not ideal for travelling with. Plus the battery cover is a bit dodgy – prone to fall off.Personally I’d rather have paid less and not had the speaking feature because Spanish pronounciation is so straight forward. Also, there is a slight click when this is activated, which can be annoying. The pronounciation is fine but the voice does sound a bit artifical. I imagine it may be occassionally useful to check the odd word, otherwise its really more for beginners. It does seem to pronounce almost everything in English or Spanish.All in all the best mid-price Spanish-English translator I’ve found. I just wish I’d had a French one like this; even now I had a quick look and couldn’t see anything comparable on amazon.