Cool Gorilla iPhone talking phrasebook

Here's one for you globetrotting iPhone fans out there. The Cool Gorilla Talking Phrasebook is a nifty little iPhone site that offers a foreign language phrasebook in five European languages (French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish). It presents you with cascading menus in various categories (travel, food & drink, etc.) to find the phrase you need. Then not only does it display the phrase ("Sprechen Sie Englisch?"), it also embeds an MP3 of a native speaker saying the phrase in the other language (at least so it sounded to me; I only tested the German one).

In any case, this looks like it could be really convenient for travelers. Let me offer a word of warning, however. You'll probably only want to use this via wifi, as there's a story making the rounds about AT&T's outrageous international roaming fees.

Thanks, Joe!

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Source: http://www.coolgorilla.com/iphone/

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Here's one for you globetrotting iPhone fans out there. The Cool Gorilla Talking Phrasebook is a nifty little iPhone site that offers a...

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Marty Z

That story about AT&T's international data rate is no joke. My Dad was looking into that as he was about to travel abroad with his iPhone -- without an internatinoal data plan, the cost is 2 cents per KB!!!! That means reading one email with a ONE (1) MB attachment will cost you over $20 !!!!!!
Do NOT use your iPhone overseas without any kind of data plan.

August 03 2007 at 3:41 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

R Muffet

Merci, mon bon ami.

iPhone is perhaps just 2 generations away from being a Star Trek-like Universal Translator.

In fact, its functions right now combine many of the functions of the gadgets envisaged in 1960s Star Trek:

"Kirk to Spock" communicator - check

"Captain's log, Stardate 20070801" electronic calendar - check

PADD - (Personal Access Display Device - a hand-held computer device that functions as portable link to the ship's main computer [aka Google]) - check

Tricorder data analysis - a few queries to Wikipedia should do the job, may need to add a lab kit through the 30 pin connector

"Set phasers to stun" - well, if your battery is malfunctioning...

It's pretty incredible when you think about it: technology that was pure science fiction when the engineers who designed the iPhone were born is now fast becoming part of everyday life.