Back in high school I was amazed at the advanced electronic translators that some of Taiwanese students had. Words could be looked up instantly and English and Chinese words could be pronouced with a single key press. Plenty of kids at my school had hours of fun writing crude words and getting the translator to same them outloud in both languages.
So now that I'm learning Arabic I've been exhaustively looking through all of the electronic translator options for this language. I have the proofing tools add-on for Word 2003 which is quite convenient for simple translations versus carrying around a dictionary. The drawbacks are that it struggles when the word is not in the pure root form and the translation does not include the vowel marks and although the range of vocabulary seems pretty good, it doesn't seem as extensive as the Hans Wehr dictionary.
I am a gadget man and can occasionally be caught carrying a Gameboy Advance, an iPod and a mobile phone. So now that I'm looking for a convenient Arabic translator, I was reluctant to carry around an additional gadget and was hoping to find one either for PC or software for my mobile phone. There are PC Arabic/Dictionaries but none that I know of pronouce Arabic outloud using a voice sythensizer. I have brought this issue up in sci.lang but the experts there don't think there is a need for one because Arabic is almost always phonetically consistent. That may be true but it doesn't change that spoken Arabic sticks in ones memory better than text. There is a dictionary for my P900 smart phone but there are no short vowel markings or Arabic voice. I suspect that there is no PC based spoken Arabic dictionary because they could end up being pirated and the translating companies have a better chance of making profits when people buy their electronic dictionaries. Not to mention that a consumer can see $150 worth in an electronic dictionary but will be reluctant to spend the same for identical functionally stored on a PC-CD.
So here are the options as far as I have been able to find online. In the future I will cover specific dictionaries in more detail but for now I'll only broadly cover what the major brands are offering. Ectaco http://www.ectaco.co.uk has quite a large range. The EAF430TX was the best sounding one for my needs because it pronouces English AND Arabic outloud, it's also a French dictionary and it offers approximately 200,000 words per language. But the huge drawback is that the manufacturer and the dealers have been unable to answer one critical question: How many of the words does the dictionary pronouce outloud? That there is the bottom line for the pronouciation feature that either makes it a toy or an invaluable feature.
There are other models that have store real native voices as they speak phrases but that doesn't seem necessary to me. I just want to know how to pronouce one word at a time. Sometime in the future, and there is no specific release date as yet, Ectaco will be release an EA800 colour dictionary. It has a touch screen and one source says it has a voice synthesizer for English only and another says it has a synthesizer for Arabic too. It has thousands of real voice phrases and a stack of memory, and room for expansion. The word count is slightly improved on the EAF430TX.
Adawliah is a large electronics chain in the Middle East and they supply dictionaries that carry their name but I don't know if they actually manufacture them. There is a 10 languages in 1 unit that pronouces Arabic outloud but the word count is too low. Their other higher range models pronouce English only and their word counts are very high - around 3 million if I remember correctly. Esentially these translators are produced for Arabs learning English which does not diminish their usefulness a great deal.
Unfortunately I need to do further research on option #3 - Najm. Najm are either really similar to Adawliah or they are actually the same brand. Again they have high word counts, no viable dictionary that has outloud Arabic pronouciation, focused at Arabs.
Finally the electronic Al-Mawrid seems excellent. It has
a high word count (CHECK)
no Arabic pronouciation (OH WELL)
but it does have short vowel markings which really makes up for the lack of an Arab voice
Oh and I just noticed now a Najm dictionary that might tick all the boxes.
SPEAKING DICTIONARY Only in 6000 series. Scholar (6000 series) is the first dictionary in the world to speak Arabic as well as English. Thus making this dictionary ideal for non-Arabic speakers.
http://www.tcc-qatar.com/Scholar.htm
I would love there to be a Hans Wehr electronic dictionary available because it is widely regarded as the most comprehensive Arabic/English dictionary. It should contain short vowels or a very slight consolation would be transliteration. Transliteration is a total abomination for those wanting to learn Arabic. The Arabic script is so easy to learn so it puzzles me why transliteration is ever opted for. And transliteration is an annoying, lazy crutch that my eye instictively latches onto when I'm studying and there is an Arabic script alternative.
That's all I have on electronic dictionary for the moment but expect there to be more to come in the near future.
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