The promise of a universal translator has been dangled before us since the early days of science fiction. While we aren’t quite at the stage of Star Trek’s seamless re-dubbing into American-accented English (although not, oddly for the Russian crew member) there are a few apps available for your Nokia that can help you make yourself understood in foreign parts. The BabelPhone English-Chinese Phrasebook is one such, and the version we are reviewing here is aimed at travellers to China.

BabelPhone English-Chinese is a simple English-Chinese phrasebook that contains just over 200 words and phrases in Standard Mandarin that you might find useful when travelling. It’s available free from the Nokia Ovi Store and we’ve been testing it out on our Nokia N97.

Like most phrasebook apps, these are organised into categories like ‘General Conversation’, ‘Health and hospitals’ and ‘Smalltalk’. Amusingly (well, to us anyway) there are dedicated sections for ‘Hiring a bike’ and ‘Getting angry’. We have visions of a furious, red-faced tourist frantically tapping away to find the entry for ‘I am not going to pay!’ in the heat of an argument.

Once you have navigated the tappable/scrollable menu system to find the phrase you want, tapping it will bring up a window with the phrases written in English, phonetic ‘Pinyin’ Chinese (with a roman alphabet) and Hanji pictograms. Unlike most phrasebooks, BabelPhone will say the phrase out loud. This could help you learn the pronunciation, but you could also just use it to say the words for you if you are not too confident in your pronunciation. There is also a collection of individual words (for food items, etc.) for which there is only a text translation with no sound.

The app works well and is clearly laid out. Our main criticism is with the size of the text, which made us squint a bit on our Nokia N97, and the volume of the spoken translations. Even with the volume trune dp to  maximum we had to hold the phone close to be able to hear the words correctly. Despite these small niggles, this is a useful tool to have in your pocket should you find yourself wandering the streets of Beijing – especially if you want to get angry about hiring a bike.

Details
Size: 1.171 MB
Price: Free
DOWNLOAD: BabelPhone English-Chinese Phrasebook

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