GoodDayJohn wrote: Does anyone have any experience with the iTRAVL talking translation device?
yes i have one, but a little too big, the voice recognition I find useless as are many other features, it only recognizes certain phrases it already knows and you have to say it perfectly as programmed. Even so I never use that feature, and feel the unit could probably be considerably smaller without those features. For example if the unit is programmed to understand "where is the airport?", and you say "how do I get to the airport?", it may not understand what you mean. It is slightly better than a regular pocket dictionary because it does have many phrases that help with idioms that cannot be translated exactly word for word.
What I think is a million times better is the translator app I have on my iPhone, it does phrases and paragraphs which the iTravl does not, plus you get many languages in the same program, not just spanish. It's free app, or maybe it was $1. The iTravl charges I think around $50 for each language chip. Plus the iPhone is much smaller and lighter than the iTravl. The only drawback of the iphone translator is that you must be online for it to work... That can be a serious drawback overseas because I usually shut my data roaming off because it is so expensive. I stay in 'airplane mode' when overseas, but whenever I have broadband wireless, like in my apartment, or hotel, I can use the broadband free like people do with the iTouch which is just a fancy iPod. If you stay off the cellular network it is free. As a result, if I am going to dinner with someone I need a translator for, most restaurants do not have wireless, so I will bring my iTravl, but I only use it as a dictionary. Since a pocket dictionary is smaller, and I find many of the other features of the iTravl not useful, I prefer to take the pocket dictionary instead, but the problem with that is often it is too dark for me to read the tiny print in the dictionary - in bars and restaurants, unless outside in the daytime. The iTravl has a lighted display like the iPhone that is easy to read in darkness, and like I said it has phrases.
This trip to costa rica I have fixed the problem by taking my older iPhone down from the States, and dedicating it to the system here, changing the chip, and I expect to never use the phone again in the states, it is my CR cellphone, so I have unlimited data, means I can use my iPhone anywhere with the translator. If you plan to stay in CR very muck this is definitely the way to go, it is fabulous...
The other thing about the iTravl I did not like is it has a feature to add words to the dictionary, local slang or whatever you want. This was great until the thing crashed and I had to reset and reboot and it loses all the new words I added. This really sucks, unless you have a way to backup to a computer, they say there is a way, but I use a mac, and could not figure out how to do this very easily.
The iTravl seems like a dinosaur by comparison. That voice recognition is basically useless... great idea though, in a few years it may be great when it is more flexible, but it is not really pocket sized, it's around twice the size of iPhone.
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nice method 
thanx 
They aren't full transcripts though. I think they were just answers to some of the questions.
