New Free Chinese Reader Web Application

[T-revor]

Hi all. I’ve just finished a project I’ve been working on. It's free with no ads but does require registration. http://www.trevorschinesereader.com. It’s the web application that I always wanted. Not sure if it will be helpful to others, but in the case that it might be here are some of the features:

-Hover over words/characters to get pronunciation and definitions

-Click on a character to get components, similar-looking characters, word examples.

-Select anything to get a Google translation of the selected text

-Translate the entire article using Google Translate

-Download a list of all the words in the article (with HSK markers)

-Show each character’s popularity (frequency)

-First occurrence of each word is in yellow. Subsequent occurrence in gray.

-Browse the news (updated daily) or paste your own text

I've got a list of additional features I hope to be implementing in the future. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I also wanted to thank the guys who put together and maintain the Adso dictionary -- do yourself a favor and check out newsinchinese.com, which was the initial inspiration for my project.

Also, excuse any rough edges. I have a day job...

;)

[xiaoxiaocao]

Looks good man, simple but effective features.

Only issue is when I download vocab it won't display the characters in Excel, I probably need to change a setting or something on my end?

Excellent use of spare time B)

[msittig]

Very cool! From a couple minutes of usage:

• I really like the color-coding for popularity of the characters because it helps me hone in on the words that I probably need to pay attention to, and can go back afterwards and review them quickly.
  
• The ability to add words to the dictionary is great; it was my favorite thing about the Adso tools because it lets me feel like I'm giving something back and improving the tool, and because it helps me review those words that are common enough for me to know but rare enough that they are not in the dictionary.
  
• When I paste in a new article of my own choosing, all of the line breaks disappear after it is annotated, so sentences, headlines and paragraphs all run together. Is it possible to preserve the original formatting?
  
• Some words are reported as already being "in the dictionary" but they don't get lumped together in the annotation. For example, 上班族 ends up as [上班] [族]. I wonder why this is, and if they could be parsed together.
  

The Excel spreadsheet shows the Chinese characters fine on my computer, but:

• Could you add a column for the word popularity? That is something I'd like to filter on, and it doesn't seem to match the HSK level.
  
• Multiple definitions are separated by a comma, leading to "Japan,day,daily,Japanese,sun". It would be better separated by a comma and a space, like "Japan, day, daily, Japanese, sun"
  

[T-revor]

All great comments and suggestions! None of these looks like large feature introductions or bug fixes, so look for them to be addressed within the next month. About adding definitions to the dictionary, as soon as I figure out how to add words to the ADSO dictionary en-masse, I'll of course be submitting all updates so it can benefit the larger community. Thanks for the suggestions and help!

[Safi]

Trevor - Love the friendly verbiage on your site and sneak peak at your new ebook.

I've already recommended it to a friend.

[LA Guy]

Hi,

Nice !

Just wondering how accurate is Google translate from Chinese to English and vice versa.

LA Guy

[amandagmu]

Hey, thanks! This is kind of what I've been looking for a long time! :-) I love how you calculate common, medium, rare and very rare words. It makes me feel less stupid when I come across one or two characters and I'm like ?! - and then I see them listed as either "rare" or more often "very rare". I guess I will be ready for the HSK after all..

[T-revor]

@amandagmu -- Great! I was hoping this would be useful for others. Thanks for the encouragement!

@LA Guy -- I'm not sure how accurate Google translate is, but I know that it's accurate enough to be useful in learning. Sometimes you'll come across a phrase or set of characters and even though you know its literal meaning, it means something more (or different) in context. Google translate tries (and in my experience largely succeeds) in picking up on that sort of nuance. In my tool, Translate is meant as just another arrow in your quiver. You've got the ADSO dictionary to define words and characters, but if that's not enough, Google translate can sometimes give you a little bit more.

Thanks for the feedback and comments. Good luck studying this crazy language...