Electronic Translators

Have any of you tried these portable electronic translators?

Everyone suggests that I use my ds, but it is not appropriate to pull a ds out in the middle of a class, etc.  I want to be able to lookup kanji by drawing them...

I want the device to translate japanese most importantly, but it would be nice to have translations for romance languages.

I think it depends on your need. Most of portable electronic translators made in Japan contain tons of trusted E-J/J-E/J-J/E-E dictionaries and a whole lot more. Some of them recognize your handwriting so you can look up kanji and whatnot. Most likely you can add dictionaries of other languages such as French and Chinese too if it doesn't have them, though probably those bilingual dictionaries only give Japanese translations from other languages.

The biggest problems are the price and the fact that they're mostly targeted to Japanese who are learning foreign languages, especially English. If you're serious, already have a good command of Japanese (above intermediate level), and can pony up $100+, I think it's worth it. But if you're a beginner or don't want to spend much money, I recommend the ds software too.

I'm pretty sure you'll be astonished by sophisticated translators' contents, functions and price.

My wife got me a portable translator (Seiko SR-G10000). It has Kenkyusha's J-E/E-J dictionaries, which are the largest and most authoritative bilingual dictionaries, and a few more E-J dictionaries to cover technical terms and double-check meanings and usages. It also comes with two popular J-J dictionaries, a famous kanji dictionary, and the largest Japanese thesaurus published in Japan. The Oxford Dictionary of English and its thesaurus are also included so you don't need English dictionaries in your bookshelf. Amazingly, it also contains several more tomes such as Britannica Concise Encyclopedia both in Japanese and English.

You can look up in multiple dictionaries simultaneously and open two dictionaries at the same time. Search functions work not only for headwords, but also for definitions and example sentences. You can jump to the same or another dictionary from virtually any words in the page you're reading without closing the current page.

Oh, and it costs around $600+.

It's definitely "overachieving" and I don't use all the contents, but it's worth its price nonetheless.