By Lee Chiew Lan
CANON MD-88 (electronic thesaurus)
Manufacturer: Canon Electronic Business Machines (HK) Co Ltd
Enquiries: Canon Marketing (M) Sdn Bhd (Tel: 03-7446000)
Price: RM199
FOR months, I've been on the lookout for a Chinese/English electronicthesaurus (e-thesaurus), and finally I have found one. The Canon MD-88 isa pretty effective translator, especially when you need to do sometranslation work.
Weighing 88 grams and at 12.3 by 8.3 by 1.3 centimetres when closed, or12.3 by 16.5 by 0.9cm when opened, the calculator-sized e-thesaurus isnifty to carry around and can easily fit into your pocket.
Powered by two CR2032 lithium batteries, the MD-88 comes with a 57.5 by21.8-millimetre screen that supports a resolution of 144 by 48 pixels. The screen can display 18 English characters or nine Chinese characters in aline (maximum three lines).
There is a red On/Off button at the top right hand corner. And below itis a function button with up, down, left (backspace) and right arrows foreasy scrolling.
The MD-88 has five main attractive features - Thesaurus, Record, TimeKeeping, Calculation and Others. The Thesaurus button consists of 50,000English/Chinese words, 12,000 Chinese/English words, words/terminologythesaurus, practical conversation, bookmark inquiry, vocabulary creationfunction and access with pingyin or the strokes of Chinese characters.
For the English/Chinese dictionary, you just have to key in the Englishword and the device will translate it into Chinese, indicating verb, noun,adjective, etc, in a bracket. Likewise, for the Chinese/Englishdictionary, you have to key in the pingyin and select the exact Chinesecharacter to get the English translation.
The words/terminology thesaurus contains three major areas - daily life,nature and social science. The daily life thesaurus covers food,transportation, entertainment, education, living and attire.And each menu is divided into many sub-menus. For example, the Food menuincludes meat, vegetable, seafood, drinks, fruits and dining tools.
The nature thesaurus covers animals, mineralogy, meteorology, plants andastronomy. And it is also linked to other related subjects. For example,mineralogy is divided into metal, non-metal and gemstone.
As for the social science thesaurus, it covers human (religion,languages, career), therapeutics (medicine, specialist, human organs) andgeography (area, nation, city).
By looking at the words/terminology thesaurus, you will discoverhundreds of new things, hence enriching your knowledge and vocabulary. Forexample, you can learn that the music family encompasses classical music,orchestra, symphony, jazz, pop, rock and blues, among others. This, Ibelieve, is useful for intuitive minds.
For those who are looking for some basic communication skills, thepractical conversation option will be a blessing. It is divided into threesections - basic conversation, situational conversation and businessconversation.
The basic conversation includes greetings, apology, thanksgiving andothers while situational conversation covers conversation which takesplace at shops, hospitals, banks, airports, etc. A conversation at a bank,for example, may be "What kind of account do you want?" or "Fill out awithdrawal form, please".
As for the business conversation feature, it includes questions andanswers during an interview or meeting, how to make a phone call,sales/promotion, reception, etc.
Creating vocabulary. With the Function button, you can bookmark any wordyou want, just like bookmarking a Web site. You can even create your ownvocabulary (which is not installed in the dictionary) by accessing thepingyin or the strokes of Chinese characters. Another button, the Record button, consists of several functions. Youcan use the Phone Book function to store up to five types of telephonenumbers - home, office, pager, mobile phone and fax. For those with busyschedules, the Alarm function can be used as an appointment reminder.
Also, the Record button comes with a timetable, memo and convertibleanniversary calendar between lunar and solar. As such, the MD-88 is idealas a business travelling companion.
Another thing, you can check the local and international time using a12/24-hour clock display from the Time Keeping button. This buttondisplays the time in year, month, week, day, hour, minute and second of170 cities around the world.
Besides that, the button can function as a daily alarm clock orstopwatch in a variety of units (hour, minute, second and millisecond). Italso enables users to convert time from lunar calendar to solar calendarand vice versa from year 1901 to 2060. For example, if you want to checkyour friend's birthday according to the Chinese lunar calendar, you justhave to key in her birthday in solar calendar and the converter willconvert it to its equivalent in lunar calendar with the Chinese zodiac aswell. Interesting, isn't it?
Another unique feature of the MD-88 is that it also acts as acalculator, which allows for normal and scientific calculation. Thescientific calculation includes trigonometry, deg r rad r grad convertionand logarithm. Besides that, you can find other useful tools such asconvertion table, currency exchange and personal financial management.
Reference menu. Finally, with the Others button, users can always checkthe memory-space usage. There are lots of useful references such ascountry profiles, chemistry elements, constellations and even Englishnames of males and females.
An interesting feature in this reference menu is idiom. There are 120popular idioms installed such as "a bad workman always blames his tools"and "time and tide wait for no man".
In addition, all the settings in the MD-88 can be adjusted within thisfeature too. Among the common settings are keytone, screen's pre-set, autoturn on/off mode, memo setting, brightness adjustment and passwordsetting.
Also, the Others button comes with seven types of interesting games suchas 23 balls, IQ test, dragon balls and word puzzle.
And users can always update their personal details and records in theinformation and communication menu - a truly great function, especiallyfor those always on the go.
Nonetheless, there are some minor shortcomings. The MD-88 does not havemuch Chinese phrases installed, which means you will have to look forother alternatives to translate some Chinese phrases.
Another downside is its speed. When keying in the English characters atnormal typing speed, it takes a few seconds for those characters to appear- this may test the patience of some users.
Overall, the portable MD-88 is a handy device for those who can read andwrite Chinese. With its 360-degree flexible and protective lid, it is agreat business companion tool and even an excellent gift. But the devicewill be more well-equipped if comes with a pronunciation button, so thatit can help users to pronounce both English and Chinese words correctly.
The MD-88 is already available in the market. It is priced at RM199.
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