Problem with Japanese TL-6

I bought an Eglish-Japanese TL-6 and found that i was unable to type a " or ° which is neccessary when inputting hirigana. Without this, the unit is useless as a dictionary.

I contacted Ectaco customer support and was told that it was caused by a known bug in the Japanese software and that i needed to install the multilingual software. The problem is that the unit came with a 2GB SD card and the multilingual software is larger and requires a 4GB card. So i've been told i need to purchase the new card.

The translator is only a couple of weeks old. Why is it up to me to pay for repairs and why is Ectaco selling units with known faults?

I looked into buying an SD card myself and found that the 4GB SD (not 4GB SDHC) which i was instructed to buy is a redundant technology. I asked several camera stores and none of them could even order one in for me. So Ectaco won't supply me with one, I can't buy one, what do i do??

When I asked the customer service rep who i was dealing with about returning the unit under warranty he told me i have to deal with the tech support office in the US who for some reason don't even have an email address!!! I thought i'd get some help from this forum but it's been nearly a week without a response so it looks like the only option i have left is to make the expensive international call to the US, no doubt i'll be put on hold for half an hour and frankly, if the customer support guy can't answer a warranty question, then what hope does the tech support guy have of answering it??

Hammer Tone wrote:I looked into buying an SD card myself and found that the 4GB SD (not 4GB SDHC) which i was instructed to buy is a redundant technology. I asked several camera stores and none of them could even order one in for me. So Ectaco won't supply me with one, I can't buy one, what do i do??

When I asked the customer service rep who i was dealing with about returning the unit under warranty he told me i have to deal with the tech support office in the US who for some reason don't even have an email address!!! I thought i'd get some help from this forum but it's been nearly a week without a response so it looks like the only option i have left is to make the expensive international call to the US, no doubt i'll be put on hold for half an hour and frankly, if the customer support guy can't answer a warranty question, then what hope does the tech support guy have of answering it??

Hey,

Thanks for your question and your patience with everything. I am not tech support but i will do my best to help you with everything.

When inputting characters their is usually a way to input or utilize characters that may not be present. Or sometimes characters are there but just a bit more difficult to find. On on some of our Vietnamese models they have certain punctuation above or below a letter and if you input that letter witout the punctuation the device still recognizes it.

To better help you and improve ourselves please let me know:
1) The name of the person or persons you spoke to.
2) About when the order for you the unit was placed (exact date not necessary).
3) A sample of what you are trying to input, the translation and the dialect of Japanese.

I will do my best to help you with everything. Thanks again for your patience.

Hi Jerry,

I reinstalled the Japanese OS and gave your suggestion a go but without success.

Here's an example of what i'm trying to do:
If i search for the English word 'leave', it comes up with a Japanese translation 'deru', it even has an audio sample for this word.
When i want to translate that same word from Japanese to English i hit the key for the symbol 'te' and then the symbol ", which in hirigana changes the sound 'te' into 'de'. i then type 'ru'. The text box reads te"ru. This is how it should be. The program should then realise that te" actually means de and find the word deru, but instead it looks for teru and comes up with the nearest word which is teaka. If i just do a search for teru it just returns the same result.

So this means that any Japanese word with the symbols " or ° can't be translated. That is, any word with the letters p, d, g, j, z, or b.

Now i'm just assuming that this is the correct way to type the word into the translator. There was no documentation in the box or anywhere i can find on your site that specifically refers to the useage of the Japanese OS.

The person who i've been dealing with is Paul Feofanov, Ectaco & LingvoSoft Customer Support Manager. I'd be more than happy to forward all of our correspondance to you.

I bought the unit on the 24th of November from the Ebay retailer Official Electronic Dictionaries. The store owner's username is stetson777, a lady named Laura who has been much more friendly than the Ectaco staff, but still without any result.

I hope you're able to help me. I bought the unit almost two months ago, giving me plenty of time to use it while learning Japanese before going on my trip. Now i'm only a few weeks away from departing and it looks like i won't even have a working translator to take with me.

Hammer Tone wrote:Hi Jerry,

I reinstalled the Japanese OS and gave your suggestion a go but without success.

Here's an example of what i'm trying to do:
If i search for the English word 'leave', it comes up with a Japanese translation 'deru', it even has an audio sample for this word.
When i want to translate that same word from Japanese to English i hit the key for the symbol 'te' and then the symbol ", which in hirigana changes the sound 'te' into 'de'. i then type 'ru'. The text box reads te"ru. This is how it should be. The program should then realise that te" actually means de and find the word deru, but instead it looks for teru and comes up with the nearest word which is teaka. If i just do a search for teru it just returns the same result.

So this means that any Japanese word with the symbols " or ° can't be translated. That is, any word with the letters p, d, g, j, z, or b.

Now i'm just assuming that this is the correct way to type the word into the translator. There was no documentation in the box or anywhere i can find on your site that specifically refers to the useage of the Japanese OS.

The person who i've been dealing with is Paul Feofanov, Ectaco & LingvoSoft Customer Support Manager. I'd be more than happy to forward all of our correspondance to you.

I bought the unit on the 24th of November from the Ebay retailer Official Electronic Dictionaries. The store owner's username is stetson777, a lady named Laura who has been much more friendly than the Ectaco staff, but still without any result.

I hope you're able to help me. I bought the unit almost two months ago, giving me plenty of time to use it while learning Japanese before going on my trip. Now i'm only a few weeks away from departing and it looks like i won't even have a working translator to take with me.

Hey,

Thanks again for your patience with everything and your examples. I will contact our development team and see what they say about inputting these symbols and what they recommend in this situation. It should only take about 48 hours so i will let you know as soon as i get a response from them.

Hi,

Thanks again for your patience. I checked one of the units and spoke to the development.

The unit i checked had both the symbols you needed. Starting on the upper right of the keyboard you go one key down and one key to the left. I tried this in the text translation feature.

1) Power up the device.
2) Go into "text translation"
3) Make sure you are going from Japanese --> English. If you are not then please press "Menu" and then "direction"
4) Hit the button for the virtual keyboard in the bottom middle of the screen.
5) If you still don't see it press the green symbol with Japanese writing on the virtual keyboard. it is in the bottom right.

Hope this helps!

Hi Jerry,
I know where the keys for the symbols are, but what i'm saying is that they don't work. if i hit the keys for either the symbol " or °, it'll come up in the text box, but then when i've finished typing out the word and press enter to make it translate, the symbols are just ignored, as if i never typed them.

What Paul Feofanov told me when i first reported the problem to him was that this was a known fault with the Japanese operating system. that is, its broken and needs to be replaced. what i need from you is either a copy of a working japanese operating system that i can put on the 2GB SD card that came with the unit, or i need you to send me a 4GB SD card so that i can install the multiligual OS which Paul sent me.

Thanks.

Hammer Tone wrote:Hi Jerry,
I know where the keys for the symbols are, but what i'm saying is that they don't work. if i hit the keys for either the symbol " or °, it'll come up in the text box, but then when i've finished typing out the word and press enter to make it translate, the symbols are just ignored, as if i never typed them.

What Paul Feofanov told me when i first reported the problem to him was that this was a known fault with the Japanese operating system. that is, its broken and needs to be replaced. what i need from you is either a copy of a working japanese operating system that i can put on the 2GB SD card that came with the unit, or i need you to send me a 4GB SD card so that i can install the multiligual OS which Paul sent me.

Thanks.

Hi,

That is unusual i have never heard of this problem before. I am asking our development team about this and if we have a language card that will eliminate this problem.

Please be aware i can only help you troubleshot the problem or help you with an order. For new versions of software or warranty claims you can contact 718-728-3605 or email abe@ectaco.com

I will let you know what the development team responds asap.