Talking Phrasebook: 7 Languages

Genre: Application

Players: 1

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Review:

Talking Phrasebook is an Application released on Nintendo 3DS in 2014. As the name implies, this Application allows users to translate phrases to one of six other languages: French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Dutch.

Users start off in a title screen with representations of the six non-English flags, with some soft acoustic guitar music playing in the background. However, once you make a selection using the touchscreen, it’s apparently all business and the game gets quiet.

At that point, you have a sub-menu with general topics – greetings, food, bank, emergency, and so on. Selecting one of these (with either the traditional gamepad controls or the touchscreen) leads you to the phrases you can choose from. Selecting one of these leads to a page where you can read the words in English and the chosen language, or tap a button to hear the phrase spoken aloud, or tap another button to mark the phrase as a favorite. There are 780 phrases in total, and the phrases all appear to be available across all six languages.

If you read that paragraph carefully, you may be able to start picking up on some of this software’s problems, but there are more on top of that. First, if this is a phrasebook you’re actually using with a native speaker, then presumably they are standing there patiently waiting for you as you shuffle through menu after menu to get to the phrase you want. This sluggishness is exacerbated by slow loading speeds for each page you go to. And you’ll note that I did not mention a search function and that’s because there isn’t one.

There’s more. The recordings themselves sound pretty low-quality, and the flat and emotionless reading of them often runs counter to the emotion they’ll likely be spoken in. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more dull, lifeless reading of the words, “Stop, thief!”

However, putting all of that aside, let’s say you’re speaking to someone extremely patient, and the odd tone of the recordings doesn’t throw things off. You let them know what you want to say, and they… they… well, unless they have some other means of communicating with you, they can’t very well use the same application to respond back, can they? Because, of course, this Application only translates from English to other languages, not the other way around.

Of course, the actual solution to this problem is obvious. You both bring out your phones and either bring up the Google Translate website or one of countless smartphone apps that does real-time translation of whatever you type into it, no searching necessary, and certainly no fumbling through menu after menu of phrases. Ah, the wonders of technology!

Look, I knew Talking Phrasebook was going to be an outdated, useless piece of software before I even saw the $5 price on the Nintendo 3DS eShop and said to myself, “why yes, this does seem like a worthwhile, sensible use of my hard-earned money”, but even assuming it would be outdated and useless, I was surprised at just how lacking it was. No search function? No ability to translate back into English? Come on, this is just common-sense stuff here. Even back when this software first released, the omission of these features would have been glaring. But today, in 2023? Yeah, no, you don’t want any of this.

tl;dr – Talking Phrasebook is an Application that allows you to translate 780 phrases from English to six other common languages… but not back. Add to this tons of menus within menus that are constantly slow to load, a lack of a search function, and flat, emotionless voice recordings with poor sound quality, and this App would have been of dubious value even before you realize that a quick hop over to Google Translate on your smartphone serves the same purpose a thousand times better. So no, don’t get this.

Grade: F

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