Favorite Popup Translator - Lingoes, Powerword, Wakan, Stardict, NJStar, Wenlin et al

[Bob]

All:

Does anyone happen to know of a popup utility that will give you the Chinese translation of English text on the screen?

Thanks very much.

Best,

Bob.

[jbradfor]

See this thread, among others.

[chrix]

Merged. So it would be nice to learn which of the tools discussed in this thread are especially useful for English -> Chinese.

[jbradfor]

I'm pretty sure some of these mentioned do both directions; did I misremember? If so, then apologies to Bob.

[chrix]

No, you didn't, that's why I merged this thread.

One person said:

Wenlin FTW. Its English->Chinese might be limited, but its Chinese->English dictionary is pretty darn amazing.

But since most people have been discussing C->E on this thread, I was thinking maybe some people could also state their opinion how their favourite popup tools work in the opposite direction?

[Herbert]

My trial of MDBG ends tomorrow. I am willing to buy it but I need to explore a few issues and compare with other pop up translators first.

I am very impressed with MDBG. It works beautifully for me. It presents the info nicely and is intuitive to use. Runs fast, no lag. It works in Skype and Lotus Notes which is a big plus.

In Open Office it only works when I highlight the text. (as opposed to MS Office where it works on the mouseover.) That is not a big deal at work as I have MS Office. However, my home computer is an Ubuntu notebook. Some info I read seems to suggest that it MDBG will run in an emulator. But, I am more interested in seeking out a native pop up translator for Linux before I resort to any form of emulation.

Another tick on the minus side is that it does not work in Opera or Chrome. Opera is my main browser so that is an important one for me. Should I decide to buy MDBG I will simply install Firefox.

I will explore the other suggestions on this thread.

[PhilipLean]

Is there a mouse over or selection translator for text messaging and word docs ?

I mean something like Zhong Wen and Pera Pera Kun which work well in Firefox.

I want to use it for QQ and for documents.

[imron]

Merged.

[PhilipLean]

Thanks,

I will explore them,

I have heard of them but I have not used them as a popup.

[PhilipLean]

I found this

"Download Kingsoft Powerword Pro 240MB

From the first version, till today's collaberation with Google, we have been there for 12 years. "

http://www.chinese-forums.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I am hoping the translation is more accurate.

Actually I have Kingsoft Office and it is excellent.

[imron]

Apparently with Kingsoft Powerword you can supply your own dictionaries to use, so if you don't like the default you can change it. See here for more info.

[PhilipLean]

Thanks, and I found a better download site http://cb.iciba.com/buy/en/1003.html Kingsoft Powerword

[SiMaKe]

While I did see, early on in the thread, support for Lingoes as a "pop-up" translator, it seems have been lost after the discussion of the pros and cons of PW, Wenlin, et al. But I did want to point out that the comment that L doesn't work in Anki is not, or at least no longer, true. Works just fine for me. "Mousing-over" doesn't seem to work; you have to highlight the item. In fact, and in fairness, Lingoes is not a "mouse-over" app (that I can tell). If I want a mouse-over pop-up, I switch on perapera-kun.

One of the features I like most about Lingoes (apparently PS has this as well) is the extensive list of dictionaries that are available including CE, EC, EE, CC, idioms, example sentences and many, many others. And you can set it so that several, relevant, ones all pop-up in the same window.

Another nice feature is the price. :rolleyes:

[bebezkidz]

I'm not really familiar with the types of pop-up dictionary products out there, so I've become a little lost in this thread. Can someone help me with a simple answer?

I'm looking for a pop-up translator for use in Windows (including Firefox, Word applications, etc.). I'm a native English speaker, so would like something with comprehensive Chinese-English entries, including pinyin and example usage if possible.

I've tried Powerword (金山词霸2010 Beta2), but it seems to cater more to native Chinese speakers in that the English-Chinese translations are more comprehensive. Also, there aren't a lot of usage examples, and English-Chinese entries do not show pinyin. [Note: It's possible that these options may be available, but the program is in Chinese, so I haven't been able to find them.]

If you have a recommended program, or can help me improve Powerword, please post! Thanks!

[c4oyu4n]

I'd not be too confident in getting a windows mouseover dictionary to work with an emulator on a unix system. It worked with with lingoes on ubuntu though not very reliable and I didn't get it to work on snow leopard (which is why i use a share clipboard application so the popup appears on the other display, which has some advantages I hand't forseen.) However it would be great to have a mac version of lingoes (Can you hear me Kevin Yau).

My vote is for lingoes too. It comes with so many specialized dictionaries (like computer science or the great literary hanyu dacidian ad ci hai) ABC dict. is missing so far. Lingoes does translate Windows menus at mouseover and it works in any kind of application and translates in both directions. And it provides one click pronunciation in any language f you have tts packages installed.

[c4oyu4n]

What I like in Lingoes is that you can click into the results and translate them, which is useful if you're using monolingual dictionaries. The result window keeps track of the pages and lets you click "back" and "for" so easy to follow threads...

[sheridan]

Regarding pop-up translators, I've been trying to get Stardict to work on my Macbook for a few days, with no success. I was mostly interested in the program, as the dictionaries available are extensive, and contain some of the best Buddhist dictionaries available. The popular MDBG Reader also doesn't work in nearly the same way on a Mac as it does on Windows.

In searching for a Mac alternative to either program, I came across TranslateIt! (http://mac.gettranslateit.com/index.shtml, for the Mac version. They do have a Windows version, but I don't know how well it competes with other programs.)

The software isn't free ($25 for a year license, or $50 for a lifetime license), but you can try it for 20 days without any functionality limitations.

After trying it for a few days, I was very impressed, and purchased it. It has a very good UI, with a main window that allows for drag-and-drop translations, searches, and also an impressive and customizable pop-up translator (what they call "translate on the fly"). They do not have a reader function (like Wenlin and others), and you can only look up multi-character searches if they appear in your installed dictionaries. It's primary function is a multi-language (or multi-dictionary) dictionary. Their translate-on-the-fly feature doesn't work with all programs (doesn't work with Google Chrome, for example; thank goodness for Zhongwen), but the programs that allow this feature far outnumber those that don't.

However, for me the most impressive feature of TranslateIt! is that you can load all sorts of customized and user-created dictionaries. All the Chinese dictionaries available through Stardict, for example (http://yeelou.com/huzheng/stardict-dic/) are compatible with TranslateIt!, plus many more formats that I am unfamiliar with. Again, for the Buddhist dictionaries I am interested in, this is a great boon.

I don't know if anyone else has tried this program, but so far, I am quite pleased with its functionality, interface, and customizable features. For $50, it is well worth it for the type of Chinese study I am doing on the computer.

[drencrom]

I'm looking for software that lives in the system tray and will pop up English/pinyin when I mouseover Chinese characters in my web browser (NOT firefox). I seem to remember Adsotrans being such software, I suppose I was mistaken as the download link only offers a source code tarball. No Windows binaries. I remember my old office girl had some such software that she used for English. I used it for a while for Chinese, but I'll be danged if I can remember the name. I already have a website I use for copy/paste annotation and translation but I'm reading a lot more Chinese websites these days and it's too laborious, plus you lose all the formatting.

[imron]

Merged question with answer (found by searching for popup translator in the search box).

[Manuel]

Old thread but a lot of these products are still around. I use Lingoes because:

a) It's free

b) A generous range of useful, free dictionaries is available

c) It features a pop-up dictionary

d) The CEDICT dictionary shows pinyin, which is a must for learners

The downside is that, although it works with most apps, the ones it doesn't work with are the most important ones: With MS Office apps it's a bit temperamental. In Anki, Firefox, Chrome and IE it doesn't work at all because the required plugins stop working every time the browser gets an update. However, you can use the "Translate selected text" feature which always works.