Pleco replacing online dictionaries?

[Sun_Wu_Kong99]

I've been at a stalemate whether or not to buy the Pleco Professional bundle.

 

Just bought a nifty new tablet, mainly for the purpose of studying Chinese and reading.  Originally I used Hanping pro for years, but I am tired of making anki flashcards, then going online to find example sentences, 等等。 

 

For those who use it, would Pleco be a suitable replacement ie. a one shop stop for learning?  It's hard for me to fork over the money if I think I will constantly be referencing online dictionaries, or making notes to look up words later that Hanping either doesn't explain too well or has no example sentences for.

 

I am a very efficient and focused studyer.  In the past, my time looks like this:

 

-New vocab list, more than half the words I am unfamiliar with have no example sentences etc in hanping, so I go to youdao to find some, but this requires diverting attention from paper to computer, switching tabs, etc.  I'm thinking with pleco, since the sentences are built in, and flashcards are easy to make, it would save me a ton of time + I can study efficiently offline.

 

Does pleco have example sentences for almost all dictionary entries (they are a huge part of my learning).

 

For those who have it, do you still find yourselves constantly referring to other online dictionaries, other apps?

 

[yhe2006]

I find just the free Pleco Chinese Dictionary App for my phone is just fine . I use it all the time. It's a stand along so don't need Internect connection. I like where is also has Cantonese pinyin and is capable of looking up from Cantonese pinyin.

[character]

 

For those who have it, do you still find yourselves constantly referring to other online dictionaries, other apps?

I have Pleco with a number of paid and free dictionaries.  It seems to have a good number of example sentences and I don't need to go to online dictionaries or other apps.

 

Pleco is a very complete tool for learning Chinese in the sense that you have a very well-integrated dictionary, flashcards, and document reader.  You will still need things beyond that such as a grammar book, reading material to use in the reader or outside of it, etc.

[Shelley]

I would have to say yes, it is pretty much a one stop app for learning Chinese. I have Pleco and Skritter on my tablet and I find this is enough for me.

 

The free version is good, although I have paid for handwriting input  (which I think is being offered free at the moment - I might have got this wrong so check) and stroke order. The included dictionaries are enough for me. if you have any special vocab needs, then you may want to add other dictionaries.

 

I consider the cost of Pleco to be very reasonable and worth every penny.

 

Try the free version and you will be able to se for your self if it is for you.

[icebear]

I'm not sure which cost (I know I paid for some), but I constantly use ABC, GF and CC dictionaries, and find all three indispensable. Also absolutely necessary to get the most out of the app are the flashcards and reader add-ons. I bought this piecemeal over time but if there is a good package with most of these that makes more sense, as I think eventually any "power user" will get at least these.

[imron]

Pleco for sure. Especially the guifan Chinese-Chinese dictionary.

If you like learning from sentences, see also my own Chinese Text Analyser (link in signature), which allows you to export sentences (with optional cloze deletion) for use in pleco and/or other flashcard programs.

[Basil]

I've been thinking of upgrading and was also wondering whether it was worth it.

 

I've come across multiple errors in the free dictionaries. Usually Chinese people laughing at me as my dictionary is proved inferior to theirs.

 

I also frequently search for words that come up blank. 

[imron]

I would get the Guifan as a main dictionary (because I prefer CC dictionaries), and ABC as a backup because it has more words so if the Guifan misses it's likely to turn up in the ABC.

 

I've been thinking of upgrading and was also wondering whether it was worth it.

Amortised over time, Pleco has cost me cents per day.

[mikelove]

@Sun_Wu_Kong99 - even our free app has quite a lot of samples, actually, especially with the pan-dictionary example sentence search (SENTS tab) in our recent 3.1 update; the paid add-on dictionaries in the Pro bundle certainly add more, but the free one should at least give you some sense of whether you're likely to find the words you're looking for.

 

You can download demo versions of all of our dictionaries in "Add-ons" that will let you a) view the first few thousand entries in full and b) scroll through the headwords for all available entries so that you can ascertain whether or not a particular word is covered, so you might consider looking at those as well. The dictionaries in the Pro bundle are all quite solid, but some people prefer others - the new Oxford Chinese Dictionary for example is one that we're actually forbidden from including in a bundle, so the only way to get that is to buy it by itself. The bundles are a good deal if you want a majority of the items in them, but a large % of our users buy what they want a la carte and if your needs are specific that can often be an even better deal; the added benefit is that you don't have to spend very much money up front but can add on individual pieces as you need them.

 

Is there a particular online dictionary that you find yourself consulting a lot? If a publisher is willing to license a dictionary to a free website then they're probably willing to license it to us too, and it may be that your favorite website's dictionary is either already available in Pleco or is in our upcoming release pipeline :-)

 

On the flashcards front, while we support most of the same options as Anki, and are in the process of adding most of the ones that we're still missing (embedded images, custom audio, sentence clozes, repeating incorrect cards in the middle of a test instead of only at the end) as part of a big flashcard revamp we're working on, they're described / configured somewhat differently and it can take a while to get comfortable with them. We've got a lot of tools for searching / managing / exporting vocabulary lists that can prove useful if you want to initially keep using Anki but set up an efficient workflow for bringing in new vocabulary from Pleco, but a lot of people find the Anki-to-Pleco transition daunting / difficult when they actually try it, so at a minimum I'd suggest reviewing our flashcard instruction manual (pleco.com/anmanual/flash.html) to make sure it seems workable before you plunge in.

 

@Basil - Could you elaborate on these errors? There are two main classes of errors in the free dictionaries that we're aware of / working on at the moment:

 

* Outdated examples / usages; many of these are going to be fixed shortly by the fact that we're updating the licensed dictionary that's the core of PLC (《汉英词典》from 外研社) to a new edition (from 2010 instead of 1998).

 

* Imperfect English result ranking; we're going back and forth about whether to offer a rudimentary free E-C dictionary (something with just Chinese words, no examples or parts of speech or usage notes or any of that) or simply to come up with a more refined, human-checked full-text search index so that whatever comes up first for "dishwasher" is something which a native speaker has actually looked at and confirmed is a good modern translation for "dishwasher." But either way things should be getting better on that front soon.

 

There are occasional errors in CC-CEDICT as well, but we usually recommend reporting them directly to the folks at the CC-CEDICT project so that they can update the master database immediately instead of having to wait for us to go through our errata file and get around to reporting them ourselves.

 

That being said, the paid dictionaries certainly address these issues and then some - if you want a large, well-checked general-purpose dictionary then the Oxford and the ABC C-E/E-C dictionaries are all good choices for that.

[imron]

repeating incorrect cards in the middle of a test instead of only at the end

I hope this is configurable, because I like repeating the incorrect cards at the end of the test and not in the middle.

[mikelove]

It will be optional, yes - for some reason that's actually our single most popular outstanding flashcard feature request, which is why I mentioned it. Personally, I still think calendar-day-based SRS is best, but some people want to review an incorrect card 5 minutes later and then 15 minutes later and so on and so we're adding support for that.

[imron]

Personally, I still think calendar-day-based SRS is best

I like to spend time thinking about what I got wrong and why, and cementing things so I won't get them wrong next time.  A review at the end helps with this.  I also tend to use SRS in a non-standard way, deleting decks regularly and relying on reading to get repetition.

[Basil]

Yikes, I've been caught by the teacher.

 

Mike

 

I cannot remember any specific words.

 

A couple of proper nouns battles spring to mind. I would not swear on oath, but I believe I had all of the free dictionaries installed at that point. I wielded Pleco like a sword, you would have been proud; but lost to one of those horrid micro laptop type dictionaries. Losses were confirmed via protracted argument and web search.

 

Through subsequent usage and checking, again really sorry but no examples, I've treated the pleco free dictionaries as less of an oracle and more as a fallible resource. In the course of my work and life I have to look up some fairly random stuff. So I don't think this is a problem that would affect loads of users.

 

To clarify these are listed translations, not usage examples.

 

On the whole I don't really look at the examples, usages part, but I frequently look at the character breakdown section.

 

I've got the Oxford Chinese Dictionary on my macbook, which is part of the reason I've been a bad citizen and not paid closer attention to and reported the faults as they have cropped up. It's good, but I still need better.

 

I'll give the Guifan a go. 

 

Another question:

 

I've got problems with inbred apple accounts. It's a bit annoying and difficult to explain; but is it possible to transfer pleco purchases from one account to another at some point in the future? I'd hate to resolve my apple ID problem then lose my pro dictionaries?

[ouyangjun]

Pleco is critical to my Chinese study.  Can't imagine what I'd do without it.  Spend the extra money, buy the professional bundle - it's well worth it.

 

A few months ago I switched to make the Guifan C-C dictionary my main/default dictionary.  Best decision I've made.  I've slowly been converting all my flashcards over to the Guifan entry.

[ouyangjun]

Quick side topic as we're talking about Pleco C-C dictionaries.  In the Experimental dictionary section, I see they now offer the Hanyu Da Cidian.  Has anyone used this?  Is there any way to get some screen shots of a few example entries?  

[Basil]

Thanks for the info, ouyangjun 

[laurenth]

@mikelove

 

 

we support most of the same options as Anki, and are in the process of adding most of the ones that we're still missing

 

Automatic (but configurable) management of leeches would be a boon.

 

Also, while I'm at it, would it be feasible to design a new test type which would show examples (Chinese sentences drawn from the dictionaries) on the "front" card?

[roddy]

I think I say this pretty regularly for Pleco topics*, but it's really helpful if people say which dictionaries they're using. There's a confusing (if understandable) tendency to just refer to 'Pleco', which could mean the barebones free dictionary version, or the professional bundle with bells, whistles and all the dictionaries.

 

Pleco's own dictionary is very good for free, but I'd say and I think most people would agree (?) that the serious student will want the professional bundle.

 

 

And a welcome to the site for the OP! I think he'll agree he's got some decent information...

[ouyangjun]

Here's the dictionaries I use on Pleco:

 

Xiandai Hanyu Guifan Cidian (default dictionary) C-C

ABC C-E

Duogongneng Chengyu Cidian C-C (the most interesting of them all.  really good explanations of the lot's of Chengyu)

Adsotrans C-E

21st century E-C

ABC E-C

Cheng & Tsui E-C Business Lexicon

NWP E-C

Tuttle Leaner's C-E

Thesaurus Database

LDC E-C

Wiseman Chinese Medical Terms

 

Interested in the Hanyu Da Cidian... but for $59.99 would like to see a demo or some samples

[roddy]

I just installed the sample - took about 30 seconds. Head to the page to buy it in the app and look for a demo download.