What brand of device do you use to read Chinese books or do you read paperbacks?

[Ledu]

Hello everyone. I posted this in General Study Advice and Discussion as it is where the most significant reading enthusiasts seem to be.

 

I use Pleco for it's dictionairy and do flashcards daily. I do this on my phone (Android). However, I do own an e-reader (Boox Leaf) and have used it successfully to read a lot of English books. Now I want to study Chinese more in order to read Chinese books, hopefully native level content in the future. But I feel an e-reader may not be the best device to engage in reading in a second language.

 

The "look-up" dictionaires on my ereader are not too great. When I read in English, I barely have to lookup any word. The dictionaries are similar to dictionaries on a kindle and tone markings are not shown either, just numbers indicating tones. Reading English books, I never notice any time wasted. It never feels like a burden. But using my e-reader to read in Chinese, I have to lookup many words a page. And since I am looking up words with the standard dictionary, it is not like the pop-up instant dictionary that Pleco offers.  I do have the Pleco app on this e-reader too but it doesn't work so great.  At least not like it does on my phone. 

I feel using an Ipad/Android color tablet would be better to read books in Chinese with the Pleco app.  If I read on a tablet and used Pleco to read, I could also easily create flashcards instantly while reading. 

I wonder if anyone here actively reads in Chinese and just what device and app you use to do your reading? Are you using an Ipad/Android Tablet/e-reader? Paperbacks? Currently I have paper Textbooks and paper graded readers. Eventually, I would like to read non-paper novels like I enjoy in English. 

 

I am not aware of any other comparable pop-up dictionary reader apps out there that are similar to Pleco.

 

I did read on this forum that a poster was using a Boox Leaf and read a substantial amount of books last year. For me, however using the standard Boox app for reading Chinese is not similar to a pop-up dictionary. I cannot easily highlight Chinese characters on my ereader either.  Perhaps there are other pop-up dictionaries or reading apps I can use on my e-reader?  If anyone has any "been around the block" experience , I would really appreciate it. If my vocabulary level was as high as it is in my native language, my e-reader would be perfect as I would only rarely need to look up words.  

 

Thanks.

[Guest realmayo]

On 4/15/2023 at 7:52 AM, Ledu said:

I feel using an Ipad/Android color tablet would be better to read books in Chinese with the Pleco app.

 

I did this on an android tablet, very successfully.

[大块头]

The solution I've found that requires a minimum of tapping is Pleco's screen reader functionality on Android. The OCR that that's based on occasionally fails, in which case I just copy the sentence and open up Pleco's clipboard reader.

[Ledu]

Appreciate your responses. I think a Android color tablet would replicate how I use pleco on my phone. So I may end up buying a color tablet.

 

I did try the OCR function on my ereader and it worked. So I could then read that page in pleco with a pop-up dictionary.

 

I will experiment with converting an epub file into a txt and then open it on Pleco as a file.

[Guest realmayo]

Are you aware of the Pleco Reader part of Pleco? No OCR or anything, you just open your file with the reader. It's wonderful. I used to convert from epub to txt but I'm not sure that's necessary, Pleco may be able to handle epub too.

[Zeppa]

Second Pleco Reader. I only ever used it to read a few things a few years ago, including the novel Life (excuse lack of Chinese title!). So I read what I could get hold of in a digital format.

[Ledu]

Quote

"Are you aware of the Pleco Reader part of Pleco? No OCR or anything, you just open your file with the reader. It's wonderful. I used to convert from epub to txt but I'm not sure that's necessary, Pleco may be able to handle epub too."

 

Yes I just discovered this feature today.  I uploaded "The Three Body Problem" both by epub and by txt file. I prefer the txt file because it swipes vertically and is more what I am used to. I guess I assumed that feature was only for buying books through the Pleco site itself.

 

Now it looks great, I don't think I even need to buy a tablet in order to read Chinese. I also prefer to read electronically.  For reading graded readers though, I prefer paperbacks so I can try different skills such as improving my reading speed etc. Also circling new words and then realizing when I re-read that I have absorbed those words. I might be able to make those types of annotations on a tablet if I had one. 

 

I like doing flashcards on my phone as it is a color screen and I like the "image rich" experience. But for reading, I prefer e-ink. I get zero eye strain reading on an e-ink device. Below are functions I discovered today that may help others. I think in the future I will just use the Pleco Ebook Reader by txt file to read.

 

1) OCR Function- If it doesn't work,  you can just select and copy and paste into your Pleco app's clip reader. On my device, the clip reader works perfectly.

2) FILE/EBOOK READER Function- You can upload epubs and it will work. Screen swiping will be horizontally. I used CALIBRE to convert my epub to a txt file and uploaded it to Pleco and it worked even better. With a text file, screen swipping is vertically. It looks great and you can bookmark where you leave off. 

3) CLIP READER Function-  I forsee I can use this to study podcast transcripts as these are more the size of articles. 

 

I got a long way to go in order to build my vocabulary and skills. But today I just randomly read a line of The Three Body Problem and I am only at HSK4 level !  I didn't have to use the pop-up dictionary too much either. I got a stack of textbooks and graded readers to get through first though.  I can't wait for the magical mass of vocabulary and characters to be in my head. ⛽️✨

 

 

 

 

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

I use Pleco on an Apple iPad and have 800+ hours reading this way.

 

A few thoughts/tips:

• Shadow libraries can be used to download pretty much any book you'd ever want to read.
• I've had the best experience using epub files in Pleco.
• It helps to have an ebook software. A popular free option is Calibre. Calibre can help you look at the contents of your files, sort and organize books, and even convert between files (e.g. pdf, mobi, AZW can be converted to epub). Calibre also offers a decent reader but not sure if dictionaries are supported.
• Often original epub files won't upload to Pleco correctly, e.g.  汉字 converts to random ASCII characters. If this happens, simply convert the epub to epub with Calibre and it will fix the issue.
• Calibre is also nice for converting epub to txt files for uploading into Chinese Text Analyzer.
• It's really easy to track how much time you read using iPad screen time. This can may or may not be of interest for you, but can make tracking your reading speed much easier.

 

While this has worked well, I do find the iPad's LCD displays hard on the eyes. I am really motivated to get my comprehension to a level where I'm only needing one or two look-ups per page, at which point I'll start experimenting with e-ink readers. Paper books is the long term goal!

 

 

[Ledu]

Thanks for sharing. Also the Calibre tips may come in handy.  One of the reasons I bought this Boox Leaf was to not be locked into Kindle's system. BOOX make high-end tablets built for annotating and reading pdf files too. 

 

Perhaps you can try reading in dark mode or adding a special screen protector? Before I bought the e-reader I have many were comparing a Kindle to an Apple Ipad mini. And some were buying the mini.  Since my eyes are quite sensitive (after lasik), I went straight for e-ink. I have read 4x as much after getting an e-reader. After I thought, if I could do that in English, why not dedicate myself to Chinese reading. Reading the experiences of people on this forum also insipred me.

 

*So far, it seems many are reading Chinese books digitally through e-readers, laptops or apple/android tablets. Perhaps it is because of the ease to access Chinese books. 

[lordsuso]

I read on an e-reader (I can't stand reading on a screen after working on a computer all day) and it is great. I have a Kobo Libra 2 and the software I use is called Koreader, which I strongly recommend and is also available for Android e-readers. Koreader supports any custom dictionaries that you add to it, I use 6 that I downloaded from the internet. You can also translate sentences and export your notes and highlights (which I use to create flashcards). The pop-up dictionary might be slightly slower than on a phone/tablet, but it is barely noticeable.

[Jan Finster]

I use Lingq on my PC

On 4/16/2023 at 11:14 PM, Dr Mack Rettosy said:

Shadow libraries can be used to download pretty much any book you'd ever want to read.

Can you elaborate? Which shadow libaries? Do they also have textbooks? Do you need a WeChat or other Chinese-App account?

[calculatrix]

@Jan Finster Shadow Libraries are those uls your university teacher writes on his blackboard in the first lesson of the term and tells you to remember them really really thoroughly.

Because the are sub legal (they don't believe in copyrights)  and if they accidentally appear in you browser you have to leave them asap.

One url I remember contained the word "libgen", the other one one had "sci-hub" in it's name.

Of course, I never use them, but I heard  (from a brother of a cousin of a friend's housekeeper) that the first one contains a lot of chinese books.

 

 

[Jan Finster]

On 11/24/2023 at 1:56 PM, calculatrix said:

One url I remember contained the word "libgen", the other one one had "sci-hub" in it's name.

Thanks. Those are both quite mainstream, but to me there are definitely not "pretty much any book you'd ever want to read" in Chinese on them.

[becky82]

When I was in Australia, I went to the Glen Waverley library (a somewhat Chinese suburb in Melbourne).  Not only did they have physical Chinese books, but they also explained how I can borrow digital Chinese books through an app called BorrowBox using my library account.  This means that I can now (despite being in China) borrow Chinese books from the library in Australia.  I can also (through my library account) log into an app called PressReader through that library; it has access to Chinese magazines, newspapers, and journals (like research papers) from all over the world.

 

As for me personally, I like to mix up my study methods.  I seldom read whole novels (I just get bored).  I borrow physical books from the library.  Read books on my laptop and on my phone.  Buy actual books (like textbooks).  I just do whatever I feel like really.

[Moshen]

Quote

When I was in Australia, I went to the Glen Waverley library (a somewhat Chinese suburb in Melbourne).  Not only did they have physical Chinese books, but they also explained how I can borrow digital Chinese books through an app called BorrowBox using my library account. 

 

There are setups like that in the US, too.  I live in a tiny town in Massachusetts (1000 people) but using my local library card I can borrow digital books and audiobooks from the Boston Public library.  They have more than 2000 ebooks and audiobooks in Chinese.  I haven't done this yet, though, because I'm still on advanced graded readers...

[cncorrect]

When I read English books, I have to look up words frequently in an online dictionary such as Merriam-Webster. But I only need to look up very rare Chinese characters and words in https://www.baidu.com/ directly. I can always get enough information on the 百度百科 or 百度汉语 pages. 

[杰娃娃]

I recently switched from using an old jail-broken kindle Paperwhite to a Boox android tablet. I had been using the Koreader application on my kindle for over a year so i carried on using that. It's super customisable, and has great dictionary support and can segment Chinese words in sentences for better dictionary lookup.

 

It also comes with a built in "vocabulary builder", which is a flashcard system for words you look up in the dictionary.

 

I'm also a big fan of the detailed reading statistics that it provides. I highly recommend Koreader for reading apps in either Chinese or English. I would never read on a device that doesn't support it.