Lingvosoft Language Suite 2006

Review: Lingvosoft Suite 2006
Lingvosoft are known for their language software for PCs and handheld devices. The Lingvosoft Suite 2006 now offers a talking dictionary, flash cards and talking phrase book for Pocket PC. The Suite is available in English paired with 14 other languages and 7 other language pairings. The individual programs are available in many more combinations.

I use my Pocket PC every day to read email in German, and also for my weekly classes, homework and to use the dictionary when reading novels. So, does the Suite live up to the claim of "A complete language solution for your Pocket PC"? Or can one of the component programs satisfy your language needs?

Supplier: Lingvosoft
Cost: US$99.95
Available from Lingvosoft here.

The Suite comprises Lingvosoft Talking Dictionary Gold, Lingvosoft Talking Phrasebook and Lingvosoft Flash Cards. There is also a free PC utility, the Flash Cards Builder.

The review evaluates each program as a standalone then the Suite as a whole.

Tested on: MDA Compact WM2003SE Phone Edition using English-German version of the Suite.
The Suite requires Pocket PC 2002 or later and can be run on Windows Mobile 5 (not tested in this review).

Thanks to Kate Ashley at Lingvosoft for providing the review program

Installing the Suite
The Suite is delivered as one exe installer to be run on a PC, which then installs the individual programs to the Pocket PC via ActiveSync. The individual programs come with cab files and readme's that explain how to install without using Active Sync, but an install totally without using a PC is impossible.

Dictionaries need to put a lot of information taking a lot of space onto devices, and talking versions need more space. The Suite can be installed to storage card or internal storage. The English-German combination needs about 18Mb in total of which the talking phrasebook uses more than half. The amount of space depends greatly on the languages concerned; far eastern fonts for Chinese etc are large. So controlling where the apps are installed matters. The installer can install to PC and Pocket PC at the same time, which puts all the Suite programs in the same place on the device. In order to put different programs in different places untick the install to device choice when running the installer.

For this review three attempts were made at installing these programs to Pocket PCs and the results varied from hit and miss to very confusing. Eventually all the installs succeeded, but it was a struggle.

The first install put all the programs on my PC and the installers on to the PCs start menu, with four file folders open on my desktop. Despite having chosen the option to do an immediate install on the device nothing was installed, so I had to do individual installs from ActiveSync or the Windows Start menu. This process was not helped by the mislabelling of one of the components as Russian - English instead of German - English, but a careful examination showed that the item to be installed was in the correct language. I struggled with the Flash Cards install because the readme fails to point out that the word sets for it have to be installed separately, and are better installed first.

The second test install on another PC went rather better, only needing some device resets and reconnections to get all three programs onto the device. The difference might be that the second install was to a WM5 machine, whereas the first was to WM2003SE.

The third install was to put the programs individually on a WM5 device, from the PC used for the first install. Worryingly the device reported that the programs could not be installed because they were not signed with a digitally trusted certificate, but after a reset the install continued with the usual question about installing software from an unknown publisher.



Review: Flash Cards
The Lingvosoft Flash Cards program is an electronic version of the tried and tested flash card technique for learning vocabulary.


Games
There are 4 games in flash cards that operate on blocks of words from dictionaries. The games allow progressive learning. The translation test is the easiest, pockets and flash cards are middling and spell it right is the most difficult. Every game can be played in either direction so that the learning process can start with foreign language to known language then move on to the harder known to foreign. The program uses the title bar to indicate which game is being used, and other snippets of information, which is a nice little touch.

Dictionaries
The program comes with 7000 words built into 7 dictionaries, 3 general and one each for business, law, medicine and PCs. To get the maximum benefit from the program the user can create more dictionaries, either by entering words directly on the PPC or by using the Flash Cards builder utility on the PC and importing the results.

Blocks
Each game operates on a block of words from the selected dictionary. The user can change the block size; I found the default of 50 good to work with. Each game remembers the current block in use in each dictionary so it is easy to pick up where you left off.

Translation test
The translation test offers four alternative words from the current block; the user has to select the correct translation. In the illustration at the right I have just tapped on the correct translation, so it is shown in green. If the user taps on the wrong translation that word is removed from the screen so the user can then select one of the three remaining possibilities.

The words offered are all the same part of speech e.g. only nouns are offered as translations of a noun. This works fine on the built in dictionaries that have balanced sets of words in each block. In user made dictionaries comprising random sets of words there can be a difficulty. For instance I created a dictionary for words from a book I'm reading. It contained many unfamiliar nouns but I only put 2 verbs in. As translations for the verbs the program only offered me the 2 verbs, and helpfully repeated the correct one 3 times! If there are not 3 alternative words in the correct part of speech I think it would be better for the test to offer 4 different words, including some that are the wrong part of speech.

A few seconds after the correct translation is selected the next word is shown. Any word that was not correctly translated first time is shown again. At the end the program displays how many tries were needed. The user can repeat the same block, move on to the next block or leave that game.

Spell It Right
Spell it Right displays one word in the block with its part of speech for the user to enter the word in the other language. If the answer is correct the correct translation is displayed in the hatched box and the program moves on to the next word. If the answer is wrong the program displays a message asking the user to try again. If the answer is close the program hints by telling the user only one letter is wrong, which neatly allows for typos. The user can decide to display the answer for a word by tapping on the hatched area to display the answer. Then the word has to be skipped.

The program remembers progress, so on returning to the same block for another attempt words that have already been entered correctly are not shown again. When the block is finally cleared the number of tries and number of words is shown. The user can choose to complete that block or restart it.

The usefulness of this particular game depends on what language is being learned. Spelling must be very important for learning English. For languages like German where sound determines spelling it is less important, but by writing out the word retention is improved.

Flash Cards
Flash cards show a word to be translated. The correct answer is revealed by tapping on the hatched area. Tap on drop for known words and skip for words to be repeated again later. At the end of the block the usual statistics about number of tries are shown. There is an option to show the translations all the time, which is useful for the first run-through of unknown words.

Flash cards is the simplest of the learning games; I use the others more often.

One-handed play
The layout of the screens in Spell It, Flash Cards and Pockets permits one handed play. I can cradle my MDA compact in my palm and play using my thumb. Not needing to use the stylus gives many extra opportunities to play, for instance while walking.

Pockets
The Pockets game is a refinement of flash cards that I find more fun and more useful. The words in a block all start in the lowest of four pockets. Tap on the pocket to work through the cards in a pocket. The buttons below the flash cards become 'Got it' and 'Forgot'. Tapping on 'Got it' moves a word up into the pocket above and tapping on 'Forgot' moves a word down to the pocket below, or leaves it in the bottom pocket.

The use of the game is that known vocabulary very quickly moves up the pockets; when a word moves out of the top pocket it is never seen again. This leaves the words that need to be learned easily accessible for repeated attempts. The program reminds the user to always start from the bottom pocket, which I don't always find the best strategy. Different players will have different strategies at different times. Mine is to zip through the words I do know, get them out of the block, then concentrate on the words new to me. I do not see why the game should attempt to enforce one strategy and would like the warning removed, or at least the option to turn it off.

Adding a new dictionary
Selecting Create brings up a dialog to create a new empty dictionary. The source and target languages must be set. The dialog always defaults to Russian and English; I wish it would remember the last used languages. Multiple new dictionaries can be added, which is useful to separate vocabulary by context. Once a dictionary has been added entries in it are created on the Pocket PC.

User-created dictionaries can be saved to copy back to the device after a hard reset. The program has a method to add user dictionaries, but irritatingly this only finds files stored under My Documents, whereas newly created dictionaries sit tidily in a Data folder for the FlashCards program.

Editing a dictionary
On opening a dictionary entries can be deleted, edited or added and the dictionary can be renamed. Renaming is a handy feature, but I do wish the name field were not highlighted every time the dictionary is edited. This is probably the least common editing action so highlighting one of the buttons for the other actions would be more helpful. Having the text in the name field highlighted makes it too easy to unintentionally rename a dictionary - you can guess how I know that!

Adding entries
Adding a new entry is easy. The spaces for comments are useful to give context for a word where the English translation has several meanings and to enter extra grammatical information. It's a great pity that the entry boxes do not accept pasted input, especially as a new word will often have been looked up in the Lingvosoft dictionary.

Unfortunately there is a big very frustrating bug. When entering text in the language used on the PPC word completion pops up. The completion choices lie partly over the Cancel button. Selecting a choice by tapping only works if the area over Cancel is avoided. If the Cancel area is tapped then the program interprets this as cancel and loses all the data already entered. This bug catches me out time after time. Turning off word completion is not an acceptable solution.




Flash Cards Builder
An alternative way to add dictionaries already containing entries is to use the free Flash Cards Builder tool on the PC. The tool converts a text file or Excel spreadsheet containing word pairs into a dictionary for the Flash Cards program. Parts of speech and comments can also be imported in the entries. The FlashCards builder creates a file on the PC which must then be transferred to the Pocket PC via ActiveSync. The file can then be imported into Flash Cards.

I've got a file of vocabulary accumulated over years of study. It was quick and easy to import the file using Flash Cards Builder. However, having got it into the program, I'm disappointed that I cannot edit the contents. My original file has some typos, it doesn't have parts of speech and adding some comments would be useful too. I appreciate that the dictionaries provided by Flash Cards are copyright and so they cannot be edited, but why can't I edit content I created? The only way to fix a problem is in the source file on the PC then redo the import process. This doesn't take long but it destroys all the information about my positions in the games for words I have already learned. As a workaround I only import a small part of my source file each time, but this is a lot less convenient than just editing on the device would be.

Trial Mode
In trial mode all functions are available so the prospective purchaser can evaluate the whole program. A nag screen pops up every few words to remind the user to register, which is a fair and reasonable way for a trial program to behave. Purchasing a registration code activates the trial software, so there is no need to reinstall.

Pricing
For purchase on its own the flash cards program costs $39.95, available in 107 language pairs. This price includes around 7000 words already entered.

Flash Cards Summary
It's surprising how much entering the translations followed by a few extra repetitions while queuing in the bank, waiting for buses and other idle moments, improved my vocabulary retention. The game play permits many learning strategies and works well. Despite several minor drawbacks in dictionary creation the Lingvosoft FlashCards program is worth buying and has earned a permanent place on my device. The word completion bug really needs fixing though.


4WM Rating 70%



Pros

• Maintains place in each dictionary in both directions
• Easy and hard games to use at different stages of learning
• One-handed operation
• Built in vocabulary
• Ability to create dictionaries
• PC builder utility
• Clean design
• Trial mode allows all program functions to be tested

Cons

• Entry creation does not accept pasted text
• Selecting word completion alternatives in entry creation can cancel adding a word
• Unable to edit dictionaries built on PC
• Opening a dictionary to edit it highlights its name
• Poor installer
• Create new dictionary should default to the last used language pair
• Displaying entries in user created dictionaries in alphabetical order would be a nice addition

Review: Talking Phrasebook
The proper test of a phrasebook is to visit a country where I speak just a little of the language. W4M funds don't run to foreign trips for reviewers, so this review was done at home using a phrasebook in a familiar language.

Organisation and Navigation
The phrasebook contains 15 topics divided into subject areas with a collection of sentences on each subject. The subjects are tourist oriented - Basics, Travelling, Hotel, Local transport, Sightseeing, Bank, Communication means, In the restaurant, Food and drinks, Shopping, Repairs/Laundry, Sport/Leisure, Health/Drugstore, Beauty care, Calling for police. The phrasebook is not primarily aimed at business travellers.

Navigation is quick and convenient. The toolbar has handy icons to reverse the direction of translation and to get quickly back to the main topic list. The subject areas link to sets of related items, like asking for directions to the post office, finding the appropriate counter and asking to send a parcel. However to understand replies a word search feature would have been useful.

Size
Almost everyone will need to install the phrasebook on a storage card. The program only needs 1.33Mb, but the English sounds database is 5.3Mb and the German one is 8.75Mb. However the space is put to use - the voices are very good.

Phrases Mode
In phrases mode the phrasebook shows a list of phrases with the translation of the phrase underneath. To hear the phrase spoken, tap the loudspeaker icon to the right of the phrase. The pronunciation is recordings of real people speaking and is of excellent quality, as are the translations. The pronunciation is especially useful for anyone learning that most irregular of languages, English. The vocabulary, spelling and pronunciation are American, not British.

Learning Mode
The phrasebook can also be used as a learning tool. Phrases are presented one at a time so the learner can test their knowledge by speaking the phrase, then checking the correct answer in written and spoken form. The Remember button under the translation hides known phrases so that next time the learner only repeats not yet learned phrases.

Trial Mode
In trial mode only the first two topics, Basics and Travelling, are available, but the phrasebook has full functionality. The potential purchaser is thus able to judge the quality of the software, but not whether the content meets his or her particular needs. For instance, I am a vegetarian, so I want a phrasebook to tell me how to say I do not eat meat or fish, and other related sentences. The way the Lingvosoft trial is set up I cannot find out what phrases are included on the subjects most important to me. A trial of full functionality for a limited time is essential since every traveller needs to be able to evaluate the contents.

Pricing
For purchase on its own the talking phrasebook costs $49.95, available in 40 language pairs. There is a greater range of language pairs in non-talking phrasebooks, at prices from $34.95 to $49.95.






Talking Phrasebook Summary

Although the Lingvosoft Talking Phrasebook is an excellent piece of software I cannot recommend buying it. Travellers' needs vary. The contents of the Lingvosoft program may or may not be right for you but there is no way to find out before purchase. Until producers of electronic language software start offering realistic trials I will forego pronunciation in favour of being able to view the contents of a paper phrasebook before purchase. The price, although reasonable for quality software with substantial contents, is too high for a purchase on the chance that the contents may be appropriate.

If the trial mode allowed a full test of the software, I would have given the phrasebook 75% and a bronze medal, but as it is I can only award 50%.


4WM Rating 50%


Pros

• Easy to use
• Excellent translations
• Good pronunciation in real voices
• Learning mode
• Pleasant graphics

Cons

• Unable to view contents before purchase
• Poor installer
• Sound databases need a lot of space
• Word search missing

Review: Gold Talking Dictionary
The talking dictionary offers translations in two directions with computer-synthesized pronunciation.


Contents
Lingvosoft offer free, basic standard and gold grades of dictionaries, gold having the most entries. The gold version has 360,000 entries, which is slightly fewer than the very largest paper bilingual dictionaries. In three weeks of use there were very few words not in the gold dictionary that were in my paper dictionary. If this dictionary does not have enough words for your needs, then you have arrived at the point where you should start using a monolingual dictionary in the target language.

Operation
The direction of translation can be changed using the menu, or more conveniently by using the black and blue diagonal arrows icon on the toolbar.
The dictionary input box accepts pasted text, and all text in the dictionary can be coped.
Often a word has several candidate translations. A useful technique for deciding which is appropriate in a particular context is to do a reverse lookup from the target language back to the original. The Lingvosoft dictionary makes this really easy to do. Selecting one of the possible translations and then tapping it again reverses the direction of translation.

Translations
The translations show the part of speech - N for noun in the adjacent example - and the phonetic pronunciation of the word.
Where British and American spellings differ both are given e.g. aluminium and aluminum, but without any indication why there are two spellings.
Translations from English to German show the gender of the word as well - see the M markings for masculine in the translation of 'husband' in the box below. Unfortunately N for noun also means N for neutral gender, and when working from German to English it is all too easy to wrongly interpret this marking.
No plurals are given, and no parts of any verbs. This is the basic grammatical information any German learner at any level needs to acquire with a new word. A dictionary that does not provide this as a minimum is just not adequate. Electronic dictionaries from other companies do provide this information.
From Lingvosoft's website it looks as if similar information is provided in all languages; for some it will be sufficient, for others not.

Queries
Flip to the query tab, enter a text string and the dictionary will display all the words in that language containing the text string.

Filters
Words can be added to a filtered set for learning. In the illustration on the right is a filtered set of the items I can see while writing this bit of the review in bed on my PPC. The filtered set is a good idea, but to be really useful it needs to be extended so that multiple filtered sets can be saved for re-use and exported.

Speech
The speech is computer synthesized, as it would be impossible to record so many words. I tried the pronunciation out in English on difficult combinations like rough, tough, bough, cough, thorough, although and they were all correctly pronounced. American pronunciation is used.

Input
The English-German dictionary comes with an optional German qwertz keyboard, which can be used as an input method in any PPC application. For anyone accustomed to the German keyboard layout, having this available as an option to the usual English qwerty layout is a big plus. The support forums have VGA versions of the keyboards too.

Text Grabber
The dictionary has an optional text grabber feature. See the illustration in the box above for use in inbox. Highlight a word in any program that offers copy and paste, then tap the little text grabber icon at top left and the dictionary will show the translation of the word in the direction it is currently using. An excellent idea, much quicker than copy, change program and paste.
When using the text grabber the dictionary opens with the input panel showing. If the input panel needs to be closed to read a long dictionary entry, then on returning to the source the dictionary retains control of the bottom part of the screen. See the adjacent picture showing this when I flip back to email.

Trial Mode
Again Lingvosoft's software is let down by an utterly inadequate trial. The potential purchaser can only use the first 10% of the database of words. Particularly for someone trying to judge which size of dictionary to buy, this is hopeless. A time-limited trial of the software is needed to allow purchasers to judge the software. To be fair I must point out that Lingvosoft are not the only electronic dictionary company offering this type of trial, but it simply means that potential customers will carry on buying paper dictionaries instead.

Pricing
For purchase on its own the talking dictionary Gold costs $49.95, available in 40 language pairs. Talking dictionaries range from free up to $49.95 depending on the number of entries; non-talking dictionaries are also available.

Gold Talking Dictionary Summary
I'm very disappointed that details have spoiled what should have been a good program. The text grabber saves time but the screen redraw problem is irritating. The grammar information for German is inadequate for learners at any level, so don't buy this dictionary for German. There is enough information for learners of English; for other languages you will have to make up your own mind. If the talking feature is useful to you then the Lingvosoft dictionary may be worth a bet on whether it contains enough words for your needs; otherwise go for something else where you can see what you are buying in advance.

4WM Rating 40%


Pros

• Large number of entries
• Accurate pronunciation
• Keyboard useable in other apps
• Text grabber is convenient

Cons

• Trial mode of 10% is insufficient so purchase has to be made blind
• Inadequate grammar information in German and some other languages
• Display error after using text grabber
• Poor installer
• Could be improved to save and export filtered entries

Review: Lingvosoft Suite 2006

Suite vs Individual Programs
The big advantage of the Suite is that buying all three programs this way is much cheaper than buying them individually. However I have difficulty envisaging who needs all three. The content of the phrase book is aimed at getting around in a language that the user doesn't know. Anyone aiming to get proficient in a language will soon be beyond the phrasebook. To me it seems like the deal is buy two, get an extra program free (or for $10), which the purchaser possibly didn't want anyway.

Program Interaction
So how do the three programs interact to form a Suite? Well, not much at all. When bought as a Suite they have a common installer, but the installation would probably go more smoothly with separate installations. In the dictionary and the phrase book there is a 'Related Software' menu item to go to the other programs. Other than opening the Help file explaining what the related software is, I cannot get this to work. It will not open the other programs when they are closed, nor bring them to the foreground when they are in the background. Instead there is a message stating that the other program must be installed. At first I thought this might be because the programs were in different storage areas, but it still didn't work between programs installed in main memory. There is also an option in the dictionary to look up a word in the phrase book, which if it worked would be useful for the pronunciation, but it does'nt.

Scope for enhancement
There are more useful ways that the programs could interact. One that I would find very useful would be to save words looked up in the dictionary into a filter, and then for that filtered set to be exportable as a dictionary for the Flash Cards so that I could learn the words I've looked up, instead of having to enter them one at a time. I hope that Lingvosoft will follow this up and extend the interactions in later versions.

Price
$99.95 for a pair of languages, 21 pairs available.
This price is the equivalent of buying two programs and getting the third free, or for $10.
Every now and then, especially when doing searches, the Lingvosoft website produces a popup with a reduced price offer for single programs. Anyone who does not need all three programs can make a saving this way instead.
There is a Lingvosoft discount offer for 4WM readers on bundles in the Hot Deals forum here. Bundles are large collections of programs, some are 3 or more languages and some include PC programs.






Conclusion
It is hard to think of any language need that these programs don't attempt to cover. An all in one solution is attractive, but it is let down by the uneven quality and lack of interaction between the programs. Use the trial mode to get the pain of installation over and done with. Then consider the dictionary carefully, as it is better in some languages than others. The Suite is cheaper than individual programs if you will use all of it, but not if it means getting a third program that you won't use. Given the drawbacks many people would be better served by buying separate programs, and a dictionary from one of Lingvosoft's competitors.

The Lingvosoft Suite contains one good program, one that might be useful but can't be judged in advance of purchase, and one program inadequate for its purpose. It is very hard to give an appropriate rating, so in the end I averaged the ratings of the separate programs.

4WM Rating 55%


Pros

• Suite is cheaper than buying individual programs
• Comprehensive functionality
• Flash cards are an effective learning aid
• Phrase book pronunciation is excellent

Cons

• Installation is a struggle
• Two of the three programs have inadequate trials so purchase is a gamble
• Dictionary grammar is insufficient
• Very restricted interaction between programs, and what there is doesn't work