Recommendations for hand-held translation devices

[VRAB]

Hello All,

My secondary school is about to ban mobile phones from the whole site from September, and there will be no exceptions made for students who need to access translations on their smartphones out of class.

With this in mind, I am looking at the possibility of issuing a hand-held translation device to the 3 or 4 students who rely on their phones to communicate. This means that they will still be able to access translation as necessary, but will be subject to the same rules as others. It will also ensure effective Safeguarding is put in place. Once functional English has been acquired then the students will no longer require the devices.

They will have access to Chromebooks during lessons.

Do any colleagues have recommendations for devices that are portable, accurate and have a long-lasting battery, please?

Best wishes,

Vicki Rabicano

(EAL Coordinator, Paignton Academy, Devon)

[Thornton, Mrs M]

Hi Vicki,

We trialled Pocketalk devices last year with some of our EAL students. Whilst we liked the idea, we found that they didn't always transcribe speech accurately, particularly with different accents and dialects. This sometimes led to misunderstandings- or, on occasion, some laugh-out-loud moments when what should have been a meaningful conversation turned into complete gibberish!

My advice would be to contact both Pocketalk UK and Vasco Electronics UK to ask whether they can provide a loan, demonstration or trial device before you commit to purchasing anything. That way, you can test them in your own setting and with the languages and accents your students use.

We've since moved away from dedicated translation devices and now mainly use Chromebooks, AI translation tools and multilingual keyboards. We've found that combination works really well for our students, especially as they already have access to their Chromebooks during lessons.

I'd be interested to hear what you decide to go with.

Kind regards,

Monika

Monika Thornton
EAL Coordinator
Selby High School

☎ School Reception: 01757 703327
📧 m...@selbyhigh.co.uk

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[Carrie-Ann Gibson]

Hi

You could check out a subscription to Read&Write Chrome extension since they have access to Chromebooks.

See this short video showing how it supports multilingual learners.

Kind regards

Carrie-Ann

Carrie-Ann Gibson International Education Manager T: +44 (0)28 9442 8105

M: +44 (0)7740407623

@TH_carrie_ann

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On Wed, 8 Jul 2026 at 12:10, VRAB <vrab...@hotmail.com> wrote:

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