Electronic Chinese dictionary or flash cards?
 

I'll be the first to admit, I'm a fish out of water on this one. Can speak "passably" in Italian and French, but an feeling some anxiety about being a solo traveler in Beijing next month. Someone suggested I consider an electronic translator/dictionary, or at the very least, flash cards, to get me through sticky spots ("Where's the restroom?" etc.).

Any thoughts from those of you who have been down this road before?

Thanks!

Here's a link to a high end electronic English-Chinese translator.

http://www.ectaco.com/ECTACO-Alpine-2Ch/

This one says you can just speak to it in English
and it translates to spoken Chinese and vice versa.

If it worked well that would be very astounding.

Thanks for the suggestion, anacapamalibu, although I’d prefer not to spend quite so much.... Something to get me through the basics would be fine.

Anyone out there have first hand experience with a good option for this?

A Franklin multi-language translator might be good enough for the basics. The basic $39.95 12-language translator might be sufficient for basic translations, but it might be worth upgrading to the more expensive global translator at $99.95, which will show more text and probably have more vocabulary words. Have a look at http://www.franklin.com/handhelds/translators/