We recently got reviewed by Slapstart:
Travel Phrasebook is just that: a PDF phrasebook that will make you sound competent, perhaps even cool. You can learn 100+ professionally translated phrases in all kinds of languages, including Spanish, French, and Chinese, as well as 10 at a time in popular categories. Best of all, you can download the phrases to your laptop, iPhone, or mobile device. The phrasebooks themselves are gorgeous (screen shot below); it provides general stuff (”What time is it?” “Nice to meet you”) with Numbers, Common Questions, and Common Problems (”Why are you laughing?” Ahh…if I only had a dime for every time I had to ask that question.)
Travel Phrasebook also serves a very large and desperate market: bumbling, fanny-pack wearing (American, ahem) tourists who would rather not deeply immerse themselves in a language, but rather get a handle of the key phrases. And let’s be honest: they’re already wearing fanny packs and would look even worse reading from a thick, clumsy analog phrasebook; at least now they can look remotely cool by referring to their mobile device. (But I kid: these phrasebooks are ideal for folks of all ages and proclivities, especially young people just out of college.) And of course, sorting the phrases by category makes things even easier. For example, when you go to a restaurant, all the common phrases are in one place (”The bill please,” “I am vegetarian,” etc. I did not see “Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup,” but why even put it out there, y’know?)
One phrase book is only $2.99. You can get two – and a third for free – for only $5, and all twelve for a mere $10. Not bad! Currently the phrasebooks are heavy on the Southeast Asian regions; languages include Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay, and Indonesian. Europe is represented by Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. What more do you need, really? (Just kidding, Belgium!)
So, from a first-time user perspective, I was instantly drawn in. I really liked the sample phrasebook, plus the iPhone/iPod screenshots. They laid it all out there, yet the layout was simple and no frills-y. And of course, the price is unbeatable. Now if only this stuff was around 10 years ago.
