Windows program that will translate text in a Window environment

[housecat26]

I want to change my Window's language from English to Chinese the only problem I have with that is I will not not all the words and most text in Windows can't be copied and pasted, such as text on menu bars in Windows or other programs. 

 

Is there a program that will help translate these words for me or is there a program for Windows like Google translate for phones where I can take a print screen and that program will identify the chinese characters for me and give me a translation?

[Shelley]

I have to ask, if you feel you will not be able understand all the words and text if you change your computer's language to chinese, why would you want to do this?

 

You can keep your computer in english and using one of many chinese input methods available, you can input chinese characters in to windows programs and others.

 

I once very early on in my learning life changed my computer to chinese in the mistaken belief that this was how to input characters, only becuse i had a friend who was thoroughly familiar with windows 95 (yes it was while ago) he could navigate to change the language back to english.

 

Are you sure this is what you want to do? I only ask to save you the heartache and fear i went through

[roddy]

Have a read of this on popup translators - maybe skip to the last page or two to get the most recent suggestions. 

[imron]

I have to ask, if you feel you will not be able understand all the words and text if you change your computer's language to chinese, why would you want to do this?

Probably the same reason I did this way back when - to expose myself to Chinese computing vocabulary.  Switching everything to Chinese gives you valuable information about everyday computing vocabulary and forces you to learn it

 

Setting the language to Chinese is still one of the first things I do for any of my computing devices.

[Shelley]

Well i take my hat off to you imron. brave and clever. I suppose the level of chinese you are at influences the amout of fear involved in doing it

[tysond]

Phones are pretty easy to switch over.  Worth knowing the characters for language selection and English before you do it though, just in case :-)

If you already know how to use the phone it's pretty painless, and using apps for things like weather and chatting in Chinese helps a lot with every day vocabulary.

 

PC is harder because it has lots of chatty messages and important things happening that you are asked to make decisions about (especially if you are using in a corporate environment).  But I've found if you want to play games in Chinese sometimes you need to set you PC UI up in Chinese for it to work.

 

But I'd love to have a program that would pop-up the UI text pronunciations.  

I can usually figure out what they are doing but would like to practice saying what the button does.

I am not sure any of the popup tools can do this.

 

By the way, you can search for what Microsoft has used as translations here:

http://www.microsoft.com/Language/en-us/Search.aspx?sString=pointer&langID=zh-cn

[mudhead]

My favorite is MDBG Chinese Reader (http://mdbg.loqu8.com/). It does pop-up definitions, will translate extended text that you copy into the clipboard, has C-E and E-C dictionaries, speech etc. A perpetual license to the Standard edition is US$79 - expensive, but for me it is worth it. There's also a fancier edition, but don't bother.

[tysond]

I used MDBG, bought the standard edition too. Great for web pages and text inside apps.  

 

But it doesn't appear to translate user interface components (e.g. menu items, buttons) from Windows.