Chinese scanning dictionary pen?

[sumyl]

I was wondering if there's any sort of an electronic "pen" that will scan chinese characters oin print and provide the dictionary entry (and pronunciation) for the word out in the market currently. I know there are several of these products for English, or ones that will translate lines of text from, say, Chinese to English. Anybody know of anything like this for just Chinese?

[Senzhi]

Good question, possibly a whole in the Chinese market that needs to be filled?

I could desperately use one myself for printed materials: regardless of studying, I waste too much time in determining first the correct radical before I actually come to the point of finding a clarification in a dictionary.

[Lu]

I have heard an electronics-savvy friend of mine talk about such a pen, presumably it exists. Good luck in finding it!

[Xiao Kui]

This thread

may contain what you're looking for.

[gato]

There are a few different makers of this kind of pen.

http://www.it721.com/product_id_508.htm

汉王E摘客随身抄V16

￥2,350.00

http://www.myprice.com.cn/products/120365.html

现代 (Hyundai) 超能译存笔

产品价格: ￥1500.00

http://www.ezhihe.com/product.asp?id=985&source=smartercn

Quicktionary5 译神5 扫描翻译笔

【市场价格：】￥2498元 【会员价格：】2380元

[Senzhi]

Thanks Gato,

Interesting ... now if they just would also have an 英语 (English) version of their site, their sales would increase with at least one customer

[gato]

Do you have a local electronic gadget shop? If you print out the website describing the pen, they can probably help you.

I would recommend the first one, 汉王E摘客随身抄V16, since it's made by Hanwang, one of the top OCR (optical character recognition) software and hardware makers in China. PlecoDict uses its software for recognition. Actually, the prices for these pens are quite high. You might want to consider buying a Palm and PlecoDict instead.

[onebir]

You might want to consider buying a Palm and PlecoDict instead.

But the character recognition engine in the version of Plecodict I had (several years ago) was a bit fussy about writing quality, and relied heavily on stroke-order, so if you're not sure about the rules for that, it might not be as helpful as you'd think.

[gato]

But the character recognition engine in the version of Plecodict I had (several years ago) was a bit fussy about writing quality, and relied heavily on stroke-order, so if you're not sure about the rules for that, it might not be as helpful as you'd think.

It doesn't seem stroke-order dependent to me. It still can recognize a character if you forget an initial stroke and add it at the end. Have you used PlecoDict recently?

PlecoDict might be better for your learning than this scanning pen because it gives you a chance to practice your writing as well, which may help you to remember the characters.

[xianu]

On another discussion group (Early Medieval China group), the participants discussed using a pen to translate from English to Chinese, so I know these exist, as well. Just did not get any brand names.

[Lugubert]

I find PlecoDict much more forgiving than WenLin. Sometimes, I even use Microsoft's Japanese IME for writing a character: it starts guessing from the first stroke!