Kingsoft Powerword 2009 - Discussion Thread

[ABCinChina]

Kingsoft has just released the newest version of Powerword which is the most commonly used Chinese-English or English-Chinese pop-up translator and computer dictionary in China. Improvements over 2007 include Firefox 3 compatibility, pinyin in pop-up, better voice over in Chinese/English, full sentence translation, and some kind of OCR function I'm not too sure about.

If you're an old customer, you can buy it online for ￥88 (Oxford edition) or ￥33 (Professional edition) by using this guy's keys. (Sorry, I won't be available for Chinese translations of what the thread says or helping anyone to sign-up) There's a link to the full version download below which lets you use all the full functions for 30 days without an activation key. Does anybody feels like testing it out and reporting back here?

Download Link

Official Website

Edited November 13, 2008 at 05:28 AM by ABCinChina

[ABCinChina]

I couldn't help but try out the new 2009 version. The first thing I noticed is the nice colorful pop-up translator colors which make English word translations look very nice. However, I'm in it for the Chinese to English translations and they don't have as much information in them as do the English translations. The pop-up translator is very fast at getting words as you can set it to 50 milliseconds. Powerword 2009 is still geared towards English learners but they have included pinyin in the Chinese pop-up translations this time.

Then I checked out the voice pronunciations of Chinese and they are amazing! Words are pronounced without gaps in between them and have a pleasant normal girl's accent. I hated the Beijing guy accent in Powerword 2007. There are no pinyin for traditional characters in the pop-up but I imagine that they will come out with a traditional version for Hong Kong and Taiwan later. Next, I will experiment with the new User Dictionary to see if I can import my own word list from PW 2007. But my initial conclusion is that I don't need to upgrade to PW 2009 unless I absolutely need to upgrade from Firefox 2 to 3. Here's a screen shot of the pop-up translator and main window.

Edit: Seems like some users are having problems with activating PW 2009 after buying it as well as experiencing some other bugs. Also, the User dictionary function is quite different from 2007 and I can't seem to import my old word list which is very important to me. Guess I'll have to wait to see if they're going to make the needed improvements but in the meantime, I'm going to stick with 2007.

Edited November 10, 2008 at 02:04 PM by ABCinChina

[Davidtheo]

Hi ABCinChina.

I have been using it for the last two weeks and it is a improvement on Powerword 2007. I have asked them to change and add somethings to it, I hope they do as it will help the English users.

Download and give it a try.

[ABCinChina]

Hello David, I am currently testing out Powerword 2009 and I think the biggest flaw is that the old 2007 User Dictionary ".txt" file is not compatible with the new ".usd" extention used with Powerword 2009. Many of us 2007 users have accumulated quite a lot of custom industry-related words that we can't import over to 2009. That's the main thing keeping me from updating at the moment. I also prefer the pop-up translator style of 2007 since it's more customizable.

[Davidtheo]

Hi ABCinChina

I will have a chat to them about the 2007 User Dictionary.

As for the pop-up I'll see if it can be customized.

[Davidtheo]

ABCinChina

They are currently working on something for the Dictionaries. I do not have a date yet but they have told me they are trying to get it done as soon as they can.

[ABCinChina]

That's cool, I'm in no hurry to update from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3 at this point so Powerword 2007 works just fine for me.

[ibiliss]

dictionary in 2009 seems less efficient than version 2007 though, better UI in 2009, using both..

[tonygts]

ABCinChina,

You commented that PW2009's Chinese pronunciation is amazing. May I know if you have tested whether it has the intelligence of sensing two consecutive Chinese characters having the same 3rd tone, e.g. 海水. In actual accurate pronunciation the tone of 海should always be converted to 2nd tone, and the 水 should still remain as 3rd tone. So can PW2009 do this conversion and pronounce correctly? Fyi, PW2007 can't do it.

[tonygts]

ABCinChina,

You commented that PW2009's Chinese pronunciation is amazing. May I know if you have tested whether it has the intelligence of sensing two consecutive Chinese characters having the same 3rd tone, e.g. 海水. In actual accurate pronunciation the tone of 海should always be converted to 2nd tone, and the 水 should still remain as 3rd tone. So can PW2009 do this conversion and pronounce correctly? Fyi, PW2007 can't do it.

Or anyone knows if pw2009 can do what is said in th quote above

[ABCinChina]

May I know if you have tested whether it has the intelligence of sensing two consecutive Chinese characters having the same 3rd tone, e.g. 海水.

I'm still using 2007 at the moment, but from what I remember, both words would be pronounced very fast without any gaps unlike '07. So it would still be hai3shui3, but pronounced fast, you wouldn't be able to notice the difference.

[rwaszeto]

hi all,

i was trying to find a forum about this issue. sorry in advance for not contributing and asking a question. i hope you guys will still help me out.

i just dl kingsoft powerword 2009 and dont know how to activate the chinese character writer. im not sure chinese character writer is the right term. basically, its where you can type in pinyin and it gives you character choices and you can compose chinese sentences.

i used to have the 2007 ver. which was just

can anyone tell me how to activate the chinese writer?

thanks for you help, all!