Electronic translators that translate from Russian to English and back again are one of the best gift ideas you can come up with. They aren't as sexy and well received as frilly underwear from Victoria's Secret or French perfume, but they are probably the most useful and practical gift you can give your intended.

I gave my future wife one when I first visited her. She could barely speak English and in her town there are few people who could speak English well enough to translate for us.

Between sign language, speaking very slowly in English using very simple words, and with the electronic translator , we were able to communicate fairly well.

We lay next to each other on her bed (clothed, on top of the bedspread, with her mother in the next room) gazing into each other's eyes, trying to communicate with simple words, and handing the electronic translator back and forth as necessary in an effort to try to express our thoughts and feelings.

Indeed, those first four days we spent together were some of the best days of my life.

Two years later, my wife's English is very good, but there are times still when a word comes up in which it is easier to use the electronic translator than to try and explain the word to her. The most recent word that comes to memory is the word 'embarrass.'

Yeah, I could try to figure out how to explain the word, but I simply punched the letters into the electronic translator and a few Russian words came up on the screen. My wife read them and said 'uh huh' in understanding. She then tried using the word 'embarrass' in a sentence to make sure she understood.

Electronic translators run about one hundred dollars to two hundred fifty dollars, depending on the model. Use your best judgment in selecting a model. I shopped around for a dealer on line.

Once I found a dealer I liked, I asked him which model he would recommend. He asked me what I was using it for and I explained that I was going to meet women in Russia and wanted to give them as gifts.

He didn't recommend the most expensive model. I ended up buying five discontinued models from him for about $ 700.00 total as I recall. I gave them as gifts to each of the women I visited.

The following features ought to be considered in the model you select:

First, you want translation both from English to Russian and Russian to English. You want to be able to translate English words for her to understand and you want her to be able to enter Russian words so you understand what she is trying to say.

Such a translator requires a keyboard for Latin characters as well as Cyrillic letters.

Secondly, a translator that pronounces the words in English is helpful in addition to providing translation in that it helps your intended to learn how to pronounce English as well as how a word is spelled.

Consider words like bow of a ship versus bough in a tree, which are pronounced the same way, yet are spelled differently. Bow of a ship and a bow in a girl's hair are spelled the same way, yet they are pronounced differently.

There are many such examples in English. The Russian language is a little more practical in that they generally spell words the way they are pronounced.

Get One With A 100,000 Word Vocabulary!

A third thing to consider is the number of vocabulary words. Usually the better the quality of the electronic translator, the more vocabulary words they have.

You don't want an electronic translator with the vocabulary of an early Arnold Schwartsnegger movie character like Conan the Barbarian. The last thing you want is to continually look up words and not find them in the translator.

Don't go so cheap you regret it. If the electronic translator is extremely limited in what it can do to make it virtually worthless, you might as well leave it at home.

Look it as a tool to leverage your ability to communicate. You are spending a lot of money to travel over there. Make the most of your trip.

On the other hand, you don't need the ability to translate a complete medical or technical vocabulary unless you are planning on performing a medical operation on the women you are visiting, or teaching them nuclear physics.

For a good reasonably priced electronic translator click any link with the highlighted underlined electronic translator .

The English language has more nouns than any other language. The Russian language has more verbs than any other language. For example, in English you would say 'I'm going to the store.'

In Russian, you would use a different verb for 'go' depending on whether you are walking, driving a car, or taking a bus to the store.

I like to joke with my Russian relatives that the English verb 'to go' is translated into one hundred different verbs in Russian depending on where you are going, when you are going, how you are going, and whether or not you are accompanied by a person or animal, or carrying anything with you.

It's a slight exaggeration, but they laugh because it has an element of truth to it.

A 200,000-word vocabulary sounds like a lot, but consider the differences from one language to the other, and the practical size of the vocabulary shrinks substantially.