English Chinese Chinese English dictionary for word processor

[PhilipLean]

I have been going round in circles trying to work this one out.

I have some good popup dictionaries for web browsers, but trying to find one that works inside a word processor seems to be a problem.

I want something that will do English to Chinese - including display of pinyin and related words and explanations, and Chinese to English - something with comprehensive translations.

I want something that is suitable for a beginner but comprehensive enough for more advanced work.

It has to work in a word processor (and preferably other programs such as MSN and QQ), maybe with highlighting , but definitely not copy and paste to a separate dictionary.

Does such a thing exist ?

[xianhua]

I had this very same problem with understanding song lyrics pasted into my word processor (Word in my case). I basically just saved the document as an 'html' web page, and Pera Kun (Firefox solution) then picked up the words. This is only for Chinese to English though, and I'm sure there are better solutions out there...

I just wish Pera-Kun would recognise 'shuo' (as in speak) properly.

[leeyah]

Have you tried StarDict? or 有道桌面词典?

[giraffe]

Sounds like you need the offline version of MDBG:

http://us.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php?page=chinese_dictionary_windows

[PhilipLean]

Have you tried StarDict? or C?

I have now downloaded and installed these.

Stardict seems a bit clunky and hard to control but it does do the job.

有道桌面词典 from http://cidian.youdao.com/

is good, it seems to be similar to Kingsoft Powerword. Both are very fast and comprehensive - but both do not show pinyin - or I have not figured out how to show pinyin.

[PhilipLean]

Unfortunately MDBG Chinese Reader v5.3 crashes every time I try to install it on my XP system.

[leeyah]

Both have pinyin>> in StarDict doubleclick on any character or word and you'll get pinyin (for phrases too). Youdao does have pinyin but not in the small window, You need to doubleclick on 详细 ( for details ) in the small window and the dict window opens with all the info you need including pinyin for single words. It also has many examples plus the 翻译 tab, which is pretty accurate from what I've experienced so far.

If you need to convert sentences into pinyin, try 汉字转拼音.

[PhilipLean]

Thanks

Youdao does have pinyin but not in the small window, You need to doubleclick on 详细 ( for details ) in the small window and the dict window opens with all the info you need including pinyin for single words.

got the 详细 but so far no pinyin in the new window.

[leeyah]

Just keep on clicking eg: for 把 entry (with pinyin) skip 汉英翻译, 网络释义, 例句与用法, 汉语词典 & scroll straight down to 百科 then click on 详细内容>> scroll & there's a list of words with 把>> 把柄 bǎbǐng, 把握 bǎwò etc etc or you can simply access it from the side window on the left

[imron]

See also this thread for a list of other alternatives.

[PhilipLean]

Ok getting now getting pinyin from Youdao.

And, after reinstalling Netframework I now have MDBG working. The downside, the processor overhead seems to be huge.

Both programs seem to be useful, though so far MDBG (in popup mode) only works Chinese to English.

Youdao says it can do OCR, I have turned on this option but so far I can't get OCR to run, not sure what you have to do.

I did look at the discussion on dictionaries some time ago

http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/25-beijing-language-cultural-university651&highlight=popup+translator

but the results were not very conclusive.

Wenlin was the favorite and I agree it is very powerful but the interface drives me mad. Useful for looking at relationships and origins. Zhongwen (online) is not as detailed but much easier to use. Wenlin does not do Popup.

Powerword is good but the options seem to change while you look at it. I never seem to get a similar window opening from one lookup to another. On the other hand, I am using Kingsoft writer - part of Kingsoft Office 2009 and I love it. http://www.kingsoftresearch.com/buy.aspx

Njstar is expensive for its sort of limited dictionary but it's handwriting recognition is very good.

So far the Youdao dictionary is looking like the most useful for popup, but MDBG is better at reading software menus - it helped me understand the Youdao menus.

[PhilipLean]

An afterthought, the Mandarin Popup Dictionary plugin for Firefox is so well implemented.

It would be great if it worked in both directions and also worked in other programs.