[Gocamino] Electronic dictionaries

[Blaroli at aol.com]

Hello you all,
While I am very fortunate  in having  grown up in a multi-lingual household 
which provided the bases to learn several languages, including Spanish,  my 
later family through marriage were not so blessed and speak only English. .  
Several of them have walked the Camino more than once, and they have told me that 
their  comprehension and understanding of the Camino's history as evidenced by 
its  lasting monuments, institutions and museums was increased many fold as 
they made an effort to understand as much of the language as possible, and that 
the means to do so that they have found  very useful   have been electronic 
dictionaries.

A couple of years ago we started out on the pilgrimage together and I, 
unwilling to serve as translator, provided my son, his girlfriend and my sister in 
law with small electronic SEIKO Spanish-English translators, model ET 2240, 
which served them well enough as they went off on their own. The units cost about 
$30 and use button batteries (which, I'm told, are still working after two 
years) and weigh about two ounces. They told me afterwards that the gizmos had 
given them a certain amount of freedom and had even enabled them to strike out 
friendships with the locals in restaurants and such, as they engaged in lively 
communication with recourse to the translators; apparently the Spanish 
speakers enjoyed the effort as much as they did.  With the translators they were 
able to read menus, purchase groceries, ask directions and, more importantly, 
could read the inscriptions in monuments, museums and the like.
Because of the size, and the price, of the SEIKO translators they are fairly 
basic, although they do contain a learning-teaching function which includes 
advanced verb conjugation (the most troublesome part of the Romance languages 
for English speakers). This is possible because the translators are 
Spanish/English only;  those electronic dictionaries which contain several languages 
cannot be, understandably, nearly as effective.

The best  electronic translators, in my experience, are those put out by 
"Language 
Teacher";  model 2000D is strictly bilingual and available for several 
languages.  It contains a calculator, a several time-zones clock, a 128K organizer 
and an address book; all in a tiny little machine that weighs about 3 ounces;  
further, the vocabulary content  is impressive. Of course, as with everything 
else, one gets what one pays for: the machine costs between $150 and $200,  an 
amount  worthwhile  considering that it compresses the bulk, and weight, of 
notebooks, telephone books, dictionaries, etc., into next to nothing.   The 
machine uses button batteries and is distributed by ECTACO, Inc. of NY,  11106. 
Warm greetings,
Rosina