Translating sentences from Pinyin to English.

[Rubicant]

My girlfriend has taken a liking to speaking a single Mandarin phrase of affection to me and then challenging me to figure it out. The problem I seem to find is that all the translators out there want you to use actual Chinese letters for input, and she isn't giving me that =

Does anyone know of a reliable website, or other means, perhaps purchasing an actual dictionary, to translate Pinyin directly into English? When one begins to learn Chinese/Pinyin, what do they use to learn simple things like this?

The online sources I've found so far output several possible and vastly different definitions for a single word, and can't produce a result if I input the entire phrase.

While I hopefully have someone's attention, the phrase I'm trying to translate this time is:

"Wan an qing ai de". I'd be grateful if anyone could tell me what that means.

[skylee]

It's "Good night, my dear". In traditinal Chinese characters it is "晚安，親愛的". In simplified Chinese it is "晚安，亲爱的".

PS - the correct pinyin romanisation should be "Wan an qin ai de".

[renzhe]

Figuring things from pinyin only can be tricky because the tones are usually not written, and because the words/phrases are usually not grouped together. Then, the number of possible interpretations can explode.

In this example, "Wan an" and "qin ai de" form meaningful blocks, which you can find in basically any dictionary online.

Does anyone know of a reliable website, or other means, perhaps purchasing an actual dictionary, to translate Pinyin directly into English? When one begins to learn Chinese/Pinyin, what do they use to learn simple things like this?

The best way is to separate the sentence into words (called ci), and translate that using a dictionary, online or not.

Figuring out which characters belong together can be tricky when you're starting, you build this knowledge through experience. You may have to group them randomly till something coherent comes out. It's the same in every language -- just entering individual or incorrectly grouped syllables into a dictionary won't accomplish anything.

[Lu]

The dictionary that comes to mind is DeFrancis' ABC Dictionary, that lists words by pinyin. But to use that you'd still need some basic knowledge of Chinese. Apart from asking here, your best source is your girlfriend herself.

[roddy]

If you type the pinyin into google.cn (not .com) it will give you suggested phrases below. You could then run those through an online dictionary - links to be found here. It won't work one hundred percent, so if it tells you something offensive, don't get mad at the girlfriend.

[tooironic]

Just download a Chinese input program like Google Pinyin or Sugou (hell, even use Windows's crappy one) and start typing the pinyin. Then, voila, the characters will come up magically before your eyes!