Russian English handheld translators

[Albert]

What is the latest on these products?  Is Ectaco the best of the lot?

I see on internet handhelds also by Franklin, Royal, Seiko and Lingo.

Any info on these brands?

Big concern is, as always, do these have ac adaptors and are they universal re accepting 120 and 240 volts?

Ectaco ER 200 DM can be had for $84.95 on Amazon, but apparently it has no ac ability.  How can batteries be recharged.

Ectaco ER 400 can be had for $199 on Amazon.  It mentions ac adaptor, but doesn't tell if it will take both 120 and 240 volts.

Anyone have experience here?

Thanks

[swindoom]

I have the Ectaco ER 200 DM, the batteries seem to last forever, I bought a spare set for about $3 but I have not needed to use them yet, after 7 months. It is a very handy translator and was very useful during my first visit to my fiancee when her Enlgish was bad and my Russian was even worse.

[Michelangelo]

Any suggestions on where to buy one?  thanks!

[swindoom]

I bought mine from Ectaco

http://www.ectaco.com/

[Admin]

Any suggestions on where to buy one?  thanks!

They are also sold at the link for Russian keyboards - http://www.RussianKeyboards.com.

- Dan

[Turboguy]

I have the ER586HT.   (It is a talking translator but only speaks English. (Me and it both) ) I think I paid about $ 250 for it on Ebay but it is $ 359 on the manufacturer's site.  It will translate phrases but the translation is not very good.   The two gals I tried it with understood more by watching the English I typed in than by the traslation it output.   A girl I met in Moscow had one and I thought it was the nicest one I had seen. 

Mine runs on 2 AAA batteries

[Son of Clyde]

Michael, I ordered my two handheld translators from Amazon.com.

The people at Ectaco are not very organized. I called the 24 hour help line and woke someone up who barely spoke any English. The operating instructions were not very good and my talking model had online instructions but not for the exact model number. 

I think Ectaco is a Russian owned company.

[Bruno]

[user=130]Son of Clyde[/user] wrote:

I think Ectaco is a Russian owned company.

Ectaco Corporate Center
31-21 31st Street, Long Island City, NY, 11106


 

[Son of Clyde]

Bruno, I mean Russian immigrants.

[Maxx]

[user=130]Son of Clyde[/user] wrote:

Bruno, I mean Russian immigrants.

I worked for Russian immigrants here in the US in the scrap metals industry about 15 years ago. It was like working for a crooked marriage agency. Scams and payoffs everywhere. They even suggested to me to try and bribe city hall for them. And everything was secrets. Even there top people were kept in the dark. They felt at home in the broken down part of town in the scrap metal district and hated to leave when their building was condemned by the City. Going to Russia 10 years later was like deja vue all over again for me.

Maxx

 

 

[Bruno]

[user=130]Son of Clyde[/user] wrote:

Bruno, I mean Russian immigrants.

Yep, very possible... but russian immigrants are not all like Maxx write... some are honest people

A good link about this :

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAErussia.htm

The first Russians reached America in 1747 when fur traders arrived in Alaska. Some settled in the area and the Russian Orthodox Church became active in the region in 1795. When Alaska was purchased by the United States in 1867 most Russians living in the area returned home.

 

Russian immigrants also contributed a great deal to the development of science and industry. Important figures included the aircraft engineers, Igor Sikorsky and Alexander de Seversky, the biologist, Selman Waksman and the pioneer in the development of television, Vladimir Zworykin

 

Between 1820 and 1920 over 3,250,000 people emigrated from Russia to the United States.

 

An investigation carried out in 1978 revealled that since 1820 over 3,374,000 people emigrated to the United States from Russia. This amounted to 6.9 per cent of the total foreign immigration during this period.

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