This Little Device Translated My Whole Trip to Lisbon, and the Pharmacist Asked Where I Got It

Why a phrasebook gives you the question and never the answer, and what finally replaced the phone app that stayed in my pocket

Travel report · Written by a retired teacher, 63 · September 2026

"Say it again, slower." - the third time I tried to ask for my wife's tablets, in Portuguese, from a laminated card

I Had the Phrasebook Open and the Pharmacist Was Already Looking Past Me

If you have ever stood at a counter abroad with a sentence ready and nowhere to put the answer...

If you have pointed at a menu and eaten whatever was easiest to point at...

If your translation app has stayed in your pocket because six taps in front of a waiting stranger is too many...

Then read to the end, because Lisbon was where I stopped pretending.

My name is Martin. I am 63, I taught geography for thirty-one years, and my wife Anne and I finally took the trips we had put off. Portugal was the first.

Day two, Anne ran out of the tablets she takes for her blood pressure. Not an emergency. A pharmacy, a name, a strength. I had a phrasebook.

The Phrasebook Gave Me the Question, and Nothing for the Answer

I found the page. I read the sentence out, carefully, the way the book spelled it.

The pharmacist understood me. I could see that. Then she answered, at full speed, and none of it was in the book.

She was asking something. Dose? Prescription? Brand? I had no idea. I turned pages. The man behind me sighed.

I said the sentence again, slower, as if that would change her answer.

That is the flaw in every phrasebook ever printed. It gives you the question. It cannot give you the reply, because the reply is not yours to choose.

We left with nothing. Anne said it did not matter. It mattered.

Six Taps on a Phone in Front of a Waiting Stranger Is Why It Stayed Pocketed

I had the app. Everyone has the app. Here is what using it actually looks like at a counter.

Unlock the phone. Find the app. Pick the language, twice. Tap the microphone. Speak. Hold the screen out to a stranger and hope she reads English letters upside down.

Six steps, while someone is waiting and someone else is behind you. By step three the moment has passed.

And then the part nobody says out loud: I did not want to hand my unlocked phone, with my bank on it, to a stranger in a station.

So the app stayed in my pocket, and I went back to pointing. We ate a lot of things that were easy to point at.

I Had Already Spent Four Hundred and Twelve Dollars Getting Nowhere

Back at the hotel I added it up, and it was embarrassing.

A $22 phrasebook and a $14 pocket dictionary, both useless the moment someone answered.

A $176 half-day guided tour, booked mostly so someone else would talk to people for us.

And $200 of roaming data over the fortnight, spent largely on an app I was too slow to use.

Four hundred and twelve dollars, and I still could not ask a pharmacist a follow-up question.

Every one of those was a way of avoiding the conversation. None of them let me have it.

A Guide Who Walks Groups Through Four Countries Told Me What He Carries

On the guided tour I got talking to Rui, the guide. He runs groups through Portugal, Spain, Italy and France, and speaks four languages himself.

I asked him what he did when he hit a fifth.

He took a small silver device out of his side pocket, about the size of a matchbox car.

"This. I press, I speak, it says it in their language out loud. Then I hand it over, they press the other button, and it answers me back."

"You cannot do that with a phone. Nobody wants your phone. Everyone will take this."

He had been carrying one for two seasons. "Forty-three languages. It is ready in one second. That is the whole point: one second, or the stranger is already walking away."

The Problem Has a Name: You Can Ask, but You Cannot Receive

Rui put it in one sentence, and it explained every failure of the fortnight.

The receiving problem. Every tool I had bought helped me send a sentence. Not one of them let the other person send one back in a form I could understand.

A phrasebook sends. An app, if you are fast enough, sends. A guide sends on your behalf. None of them receive.

And a conversation is two directions, or it is not a conversation. It is a man reading a card at a pharmacist.

So the fix is not a better phrasebook or a faster app. It is a thing you can hand to the other person, that speaks their answer back in yours.

The Pocket Device That Answers Back Out Loud

Rui wrote the name on my map. It is the Calduneo Instant Pocket Translator, and it costs $89.99. Anne thought that was a lot for "a gadget". We will come back to it.

It is a slim silver unit with one large button on the front and a second button for the other person. No screen to read upside down, no app to open.

You hold the button, say your sentence, let go. It says it out loud in their language, one second later.

They hold the other button and answer. It says their answer out loud in English. That is the whole exchange.

Here is what makes it work in the street, not just at a hotel desk:

• Forty-three languages, in both directions, spoken aloud
• Two buttons, one for you and one for them, so a request becomes an exchange
• Ready in one press, no unlocking, no app, no choosing a language while someone waits
• You hand over a small device with one job, not your phone with your life on it
• Charges by USB and holds several days of ordinary travel use

I ordered one to the hotel that night, and told Anne it was for the next trip.

Day Two, the Same Pharmacy, and She Answered Into It

It arrived faster than I expected. I went back to the same pharmacy, partly out of stubbornness.

I held the button. "My wife needs these tablets, this strength, do you have them?" I let go. It spoke Portuguese to her, out loud, in one second.

She looked at it. Then she looked at me. Then she reached across the counter, took it, and held the other button.

"Yes. Do you want the box of thirty or sixty?"

In English. Out loud. The man behind me did not sigh.

Then she held the button again and asked, in English, where I had got it. I showed her Rui's handwriting on my map. She wrote it down.

Day five: a fish market in Setúbal. I asked what was good today. The woman laughed, took the device, and told me. We ate it. It was.

Day nine: a train conductor explained a platform change to Anne, into the device, while I was buying coffee. She had never held it before.

Day twelve: Anne left it in the hotel safe by mistake. Lunch that day was pointing again. Neither of us said anything, but we both noticed, and it never stayed in the safe after that.

Here Is What It Does, Without the Story

It speaks the answer out loud. The other person hears a voice in their own language, instead of reading text off a stranger's phone.

Two buttons, two directions. They hold the second button and reply, which turns a request into an actual exchange.

You hand it over without handing over your phone. A small device with one job is easy to offer and easy to accept.

It is ready in one second. Press and speak. No unlocking, no app, no language menu while someone waits.

Forty-three languages. Enough for the trips people actually take, in both directions.

Eighty-Nine Dollars for a Translator

Anne said it out loud when I told her, and it is the first thing most people say.

Set it against the fortnight: $36 of books that could not answer, a $176 tour bought so someone else would talk, $200 of roaming for an app I did not dare use. Four hundred and twelve dollars that never got a pharmacist's reply.

Most people in this position have already spent it. They spent it in pieces on things that send and cannot receive.

The Calduneo is $89.99, once. It has come to Spain and Italy with us since, and it will go to Japan in the spring, where the phrasebook would have been a joke.

And it replaces the tour bought for the wrong reason. We still take tours, for the history. Not so someone will speak for us.

Why I Would Not Wait Until the Week Before You Fly

Here is the honest part about timing. The trips people take this autumn and over the holidays are booked already, and most of them are to places where English gets you through the airport and no further.

The device takes ten minutes out of the box: charge it, pick your language, press once to check it hears you. Then it lives in a coat pocket.

So the practical reason to order it now, rather than the week before you fly, is that it has to ship, and you want one evening at home to press the button before a pharmacist is looking at you.

Sixty Days, and the Risk Sits With Them

Sixty days is one whole trip, and long enough to stand at a counter where the phrasebook would have failed you.

Take it on that trip. If it does not hold a conversation, if nobody answers into it, you send it back.

The full amount is returned. Not store credit, and you do not have to make a case for it.

Shipping is free inside the US, and it leaves the warehouse within one business day.

So the only thing you are risking is the next counter, and you were going to stand at it anyway.

Anne's verdict was not "it translates well". It was that the conductor talked to her. That is the only test that means anything.

The Questions Everyone Asks Before They Order

Your Two Choices

Choice One: keep travelling the way I did. Pack the phrasebook, keep the app in your pocket, and let the other person decide how long to wait while you find the page.

You will get the question out. You will not get the answer.

Choice Two: put a small device in your coat pocket before the next trip. Press, speak, hand it over, and hear what they actually said.

You keep your phone in your pocket. You eat what is good. You ask the pharmacist the follow-up question.

Notes From People Who Had Already Tried Getting By With an App

I stood at that counter for years, in one country or another, reading a sentence out of a book and hoping. It took a pharmacist reaching across for the device to end it.

You may not have a Rui to write the name on your map. Now you have this.

P.S. Since Lisbon I have told every couple we travel with. The ones who laughed at "a gadget" are the ones who text me from a market a month later.

P.P.S. If you fly this season, it needs one evening on the charger and one press at home before a counter. Order it for now, not for the week you leave.

Ask the Question You Actually Have

The Calduneo Instant Pocket Translator: forty-three languages spoken aloud in both directions, two buttons so they can answer, ready in one press, 60-day return window.