Reading aids for chinese documents

[chinesemadrush]

Hi everyone,

 

Is there a computer program (preferably free) that can help us read chinese documents? Perhaps a functionality like the Yellowbridge website where if you hover over the text, they would give you an explanation of the words (see screenshot). Thank you.

 

[Shelley]

If your documents are web based, you can use Perapera in Firefox http://www.perapera.org/plugins/ to read text as per your example. There is also Zhongwen for Chrome.

 

For other documents I would recommend Wenlin, they have a free version, have a look here https://www.wenlin.com/products.

[chinesemadrush]

Wow Weilin looks good. Just wondering, do you happen to know of programs that work directly within Microsoft Word?

[imron]

Not free (but relatively inexpensive) is my own Chinese Text Analyser.  CTA will also keep track of your known vocabulary, making it easy to tell whether or not an article is suitable for your current level and also lets you export unknown words based on frequency and other statistics.

[chinesemadrush]

Hey Imron, do you have any screenshots to demonstrate how your program works? Thanks.

[imron]

There is a thread here with some basic screenshots and also discussion about the program and its features.

 

I'm also currently in the process of writing detailed documentation for the program but due to other commitments that's coming along more slowly than I'd like

[Shelley]

Depending on which version of windows you are using, there is built into MS word a translation function, but it doesn't always work.

 

You can copy the text into wenlin and use that.

[eddyf]

On mobile, Pleco has a Reader feature which works quite well, especially if you have a lot of dictionaries and you use Pleco flashcards, because it's all seamlessly integrated.

[Shelley]

We went through the benefits of Pleco with chinesemadrush here http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/52060-good-recommendations-for-chinese-writing-tablet/#comment-400851

[chinesemadrush]

For those interested in reading online, I happen to find a good source of the various options out there: https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/Tools#Browser_Extensions:_Pinyin_Popups

[chinesemadrush]

Just wanted to share this great site I just found. It allows easy annotation of text too: https://mandarinspot.com/annotate

[Shelley]

There a few topics about it here on the forums, if you do a search for mandarin spot you get some interesting things.