Type Chinese+Pinyin on top

[pyroglycerine]

Hey, 

 

Anyone know of a software or patch that I can download to allow me to type Chinese characters with the pinyin shown above it (like in the textbooks)?

It would be a useful studying tool for me so I can type characters I don't know/need to remember, without having to copy and paste to google translate when I go back to it.

 

Thanks!

[Demonic_Duck]

Microsoft word has this functionality, though it's pretty buggy. Highlight the characters and click "phonetic guide", which can be found in the ribbon (Home->Font), at least in my version of Word:

 

 

Anyway, I've always thought that having the pinyin above the characters is a terrible idea and pretty much inexcusable in a textbook or reader - you have no decent way of covering it up as you read.

 

Better to put it below the characters, or better still on a different page entirely so your eyes aren't drawn to it whilst you're trying to read the characters. You could do the latter very easily by simply using one of the many free hanzi -> pinyin converters available online (I can't give a recommendation as to the best one, but google it and you'll find a good number to choose from). As for the former, I'd recommend http://mandaread.com/ - you can play around with the settings to tailor it to your needs (unfortunately so far they have no setting to have pinyin with tone marks below the text, the closest you can get is tone marks above and toneless pinyin below).

[imron]

Any automated tool is also bound to be inaccurate due to the complexities of segmenting Chinese and all of the characters with multiple pronunciations.  Although slower, for accurate results everything needs to be checked against a dictionary.

[Demonic_Duck]

Hmm yeah, that's definitely worth mentioning too. The better tools out there won't suffer too much from this problem, but make sure to at least cast a cursory glance over your output and compare it with the input. If you find the output doesn't seem to make grammatical sense, your problem may well be that it's been converted incorrectly.

[pyroglycerine]

Ok,  thanks guys

[imron]

The better tools out there won't suffer too much from this problem

They will all suffer from this problem to a degree significant enough that you can't blindly trust the output.  Unfortunately beginners are the least likely to be able to spot this, and it's most likely to occur in the tricky cases where you want to be sure you're getting it correct.