People going on a gap year, particularly those going on holidays to Thailand, may wish to use an audio phrasebook via their mobile phone to help them be understood while abroad.
People going on a gap year, particularly those going on holidays to Thailand, may wish to use an audio phrasebook via their mobile phone to help them be understood while abroad.
This is the suggestion of Bas Jaburg, spokesperson for Steape, which has collaborated with Lonely Planet to produce a ten-language phrase library that plays translations phonetically through some mobile phone loudspeakers.
Mr Jaburg said it mostly incorporates simple phrases such as “can I book a room”, but the main benefit is that travellers will be able to hear the translation, eliminating problems with pronunciation that may be caused by traditional phrasebooks.
“It is really useful as an additional means of helping you. If you go to countries for a few days and don’t want to buy the whole phrasebook it is convenient to have some help on a device that you have with you anyway,” he commented.
The languages covered by Steape’s audio phrase library are currently Mandarin, Vietnamese, Cantonese, German, French, Italian, Japanese, Thai, Czech and Spanish.
