Unboxing of an e-dictionary that looks like the pioneer series calcs

[andylithia]

   
   
Voila!
It's actually smaller and has fewer keys than a pioneer calculator.

   
   
And it translates ok-ish. In fact "你好吗" is closer to "how are you doing" than "hello". It handles Chinese input surprisingly well. Commonly, Chinese characters are entered using phonetic notations. In the early computing systems, before multi-character word inputting and adaptive IME matured, phonetic notation can be painful to use due to ambiguity. But on such a device, it's not a big issue.

Due to memory constraints, it can't hold many words, and the translations given are crunched, detail-less. It certainly can't replace a print book, but it was the only choice to carry in one's pocket.
Since the boom of the Chinese e-dictionary market in the 90s, the functionality of such products grew together with microprocessors and memory chips. These products are eventually replaced by mobile phones.