Chinese Translation Tools

[geo33]

Does anyone here have experience with WENLIN and KEY 2012?

I will purchase either one or the other, but I would like some advice from others!

Up to now, I have been using the amazing tool DIMSUM, but I need something with a more powerful dictionary now.

I have been trying Wenlin 3.4. Its quite good, but the 'lookup' at the bottom of the window is awkward to use. Why does the lookup not appear in a pop-up at eye-level with the word you are trying to read? The constant averting the eyes to look down at the 'lookup' window and then back at the text is distracting and unnecessary. I recently read about version 4 but hear it has the same bizarre and outdated interface as the old version, although I read several favourable reviews (and hopes for a new interface).

I am using a trial version of KEY 2012 (they offered an academic discount price of $50), but I have not yet been able to figure out if it is as useful a translation tool as Wenlin. It seems to be more keyed to CJK input and making lessons for students. I'm not sure the dictionary/ translation feature is as good as Wenlin's.

Does anyone here have experience with these tools? Which one will be better for translation work? Thanks very much!

[geo33]

Wow.. nobody here has used both Wenlin or KEY5? I'm surprised. They seem to be the best tools out there, but I'm simply not sure.

I greatly dislike cloud-based tools of any kind. I'm in Beijing, where the internet is always blocked or restriced or doesnt' work at all, or is super-slow.

So cloud-based applications are completely useless to me.

I'm looking forward to hearing of other's experiences

[mikelove]

Wenlin's great; I don't believe 4.0 supports putting the lookup closer to the text, but since windows are resizable you could try getting it by making the window narrower. You could also highlight a word (drag over it, not just mouse over) to bring up its definition in a separate window. They're extremely nice / helpful people, so if you write to them with any concerns I'm sure they can give you much more detailed advice on how to deal with them.

Haven't used KEY2012 so I can't comment on that.

[T-revor]

WenLin is great. Interface leaves much to be desired but the dictionary is awesome. I actually really like that you have to look at the bottom to see the definition b/c I tend to follow along with my mouse as I read and the pop ups don't give me enough time to think of the word on my own before I see it popped up on the screen.

[geo33]

Thanks for the comments! I just bought Key5 at academic pricing. I can use some of its features- like its creation of pinyin for my thesis. There's tons of Chinese text that needs properly created pinyin.

The dictionary in Key5 seems different than the dictionary in Wenlin 3. Key 5 seems not as good as a dictionary, and there doesnt' seem to be any way to ould look up words that a) start with the same 汉子; b) contain the same 汉字

Also, it it used a huge amount of memory, 134,000 K even when there are no open files in it at all. It uses far more than LibreOffice, a fact which stunned me. It used 134,000 K of memory while Wenlin used 3400 K. LibreOffice used 51,000. Something is wrong there!

Anyway, it seems that for translation work, Wenlin might be the best. But KEY5 has some pretty nice features that I'm just beginning to explore. They really do need to fix the memory issue, and if possible, improve their dictionary. I may change my mind about this, or add updates later

[geo33]

Wenlin and KEY5 on sale:

Wenlin- one of the best Chinese-English dictionaries for study or doing translation. Its on sale now for $99 which is nearly half-price.

Go to www.wenlinhangdian.com and place your order. At the end of your order you will be asked for a discount code. Please enter in Er4intL99.

Yes it's expensive, but really worthwhile if you need a serious language-study-translation tool. I avoided buying it for years, but now realize the error of my ways. There's simply nothing out there better.

KEY5 by Asian Communication - is a very strong contender to Wenlin. Its feature set is quite different, but it too has a very good dictionary function. I recently purchased it and am checking out its features.

Its academic pricing of US$ 49.00 is available online, at www.cjkware.com/student

[GarySaville]

Geo33:

The link above is misspelled. It's missing the s in shang: www.wenlinshangdian.com

Also, the discount code did not work. Are you sure it's written correctly?

Thanks

Gary

[geo33]

Hi and thanks for pointing out the spelling mistake in the Wenlin website link. Sorry about that. The Wenlin discount indeed was Er4intL99

Perhaps it has expired.

I've been using Wenlin 4.1 beta for some time. Its impressive and runs quickly. However, the Wenlin institute really ought to redesign its awful interface.

I have used and reviewed cjkware "KEY5" dictionary extensively over the last few months. It has many outstanding features, my favorite being the in-line popup dictionary that allows me to read faster. I also like the various tools for creating properly parsed pinyin with tones- its useful for academic papers to ensure the pinyin parsing is correct. It has a host of other useful features as well. The problem is that the program seems very buggy- it runs very slowly on my superfast Thinkpad W520 with SSD harddrive and 16 gig of RAM. KEY5 uses huge amounts of system resources -- it uses 130 megs of memory. This is bizarre compared to Wenlin, which needs only 13 megs to run. The slow responsiveness of the application makes using KEY5 somewhat annoying. Just as bad, KEY5 runs impossibly slow on my Atom processor netbook-- so slow that the program is unusable.

It appears that there's some real problems with the coding or design of KEY5 that need addressing. I wrote numerous times to the developers to ask about this, but have not received any reply since August. KEY5 has great potential and should be a great program, but its not there yet. Once the developers update it, I'll test it again and post my findings here.

[geo33]

I'm really very surprised that so few people here have written to share their experiences with Wenlin or KEY5.

Especially surprising is that so few people seem to have heard about or use KEY5 ( www.cjkware.com). It is, after all, one of the most advanced dictionary/translator tools that exist.

I have been using and testing KEY5 for months. Earlier versions were quite buggy but the KEY5 Sept 3 build is somewhat better.

Unfortunately, KEY5 is still surprisingly slow on my Thinkpad 520 iCore7 with 16 gig RAM. I'm running Windows 7 and KEY5 on a 128 gig SSD Samsung drive. This is really a rather fast powerful computer that can easily handle HD video editing- one of the most severe tests of any computer.

But KEY5's performance is so slow, it is nearly unusable. I can type faster than the characters appear on the screen. When I contacted the developers about it, they claimed that their customers do not have problems with KEY5 and that improving the speed of the program is a "daunting task" that is not high on their priority list.

Conclusions from my tests: KEY5 has amazing potential, but the fact it runs so slowly that unless you have the very latest hardware, KEY5 will likely cause you considerable annoyance. Wenlin 4.1 on the other hand runs fast on my Thinkpad 520 iCore7, and even performs well on my 2008 HP 2140 Mini netbook with a wimpy Atom processor. Until Asian Languages Software Inc.(the makers of KEY5) can fix these issues, their program can't compare very well to the excellent Wenlin.

[imron]

Especially surprising is that so few people seem to have heard about or use KEY5

The problem is that the program seems very buggy....KEY5 uses huge amounts of system resources

But KEY5's performance is so slow, it is nearly unusable.......and that improving the speed of the program is a "daunting task" that is not high on their priority list

You're not exactly selling it well.

Honestly speaking, given that you've been talking about it in almost every post you've made, if you didn't complain about it more than you promoted it I would have suspected you to be a stooge for the company.

As for Wenlin, if you do a search of the forums, you will find many existing threads discussing it.