Whether you need to say "How much extra for the happy ending?" in Japanese or "Pull the cab over, I'm going to be sick" in Russian, Franklin's Speaking Global Translator can help you say it like a native speaker.

Filled with 450,000 words (115,000 it can "speak" back to you in a human voice), and 12,000 phrases, it'll let you communicate just about anywhere in the world in 12 languages: Chinese (Mandarin), Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish.

Slide the cover open to reveal the QWERTY keyboard, enter the word you want to translate (the predictive spelling feature helps with misspelled words), choose the language, and it'll show and speak the word to you. (Chinese, Japanese and Korean words are displayed both phonetically using the Roman alphabet, and are shown on the screen in Asian characters.)

The headphone jack and earbuds help if you don't want people around hearing your conversation with an electronic box, and also lets you listen to MP3 files. You can record custom words and phrases, too. ("Who do I give the bail money to?")

The translator also comes with five games, an organizer, local/world clock, calculator, and converts metric and currency. So you'll know how many Yen to tip your masseuse.

$229.95
www.franklin.com