Dictionary pens for Chinese (词典笔)

[liqi]

Anyone has any experience with those kind of devices? I was thinking of buying one because I honestly kinda hate how I have to use my phone for everything. I don't enjoy much reading on the phone, and having to pull it out to look up on the dictionary is annoying as I sometimes get distracted by other stuff (thanks ADHD!). So, instead of going nuclear and buying an actual dictionary heh, I looked up those 词典笔 on Taobao. They don't seem too bad actually, but they're obviously marketed towards Chinese speakers leaning English, not the other way around, so idk if it would work very well for what I want (mostly just single word lookups). Has anyone ever tried one? I have my eyes on 有道 because I like their website (even though idk how related they are) and it seems to be the best reviewed one (some of these can even solve math apparently😂)

[Flickserve]

If you hate pulling out a phone to look up on the dictionary, you will quickly hate pulling out a dictionary pen. 

[liqi]

I don't really hate the look up act itself, I don't mind taking a look at it, I hate the fact that I need to touch my phone at all. I know myself too well to know I'll get distracted ("oh look a new massage, maybe I should check my emails too, hmm what about that newsletter? Hm? What was I doing again?"). Doesn't help that ADHD medication in China is awful (and out of stock for 2 weeks 😮‍💨)

 

The dictionary pen is just so I can look up works on a device without those pesky notifications from the green bubble apps! That way I can just throw my phone out of view and forger about it when reading. I let curiosity take the best of me and ordered the 有道A6, it should probably arrive tomorrow, I'll update later if it's worth it or not 😛. Says it supports the 现代汉语规范词典, I quite like it on pleco, so fingers crossed it's not gonna be a disappointment

[mikelove]

There actually do seem be some of these optimized around English speakers learning Chinese now, for what it's worth - I got a Wo Hui F1 in a conference swag bag and it includes English definitions and HSK lists and even some weird AI stuff like a voice pronunciation evaluation function.

[liqi]

On 2/6/2025 at 2:26 AM, mikelove said:

There actually do seem be some of these optimized around English speakers learning Chinese now, for what it's worth

What an honor to have the Pleco creator himself chime in! 😂😆

 

That's good to know! I looked up online and indeed, there's a Wo Hui Mandarin F1 pen.... which is nowhere to be found in China . Going on a small tangent, I still don't really get where they're trying to go with Wo Hui Mandarin. They're clearly trying to build a comprehensive official platform for Chinese learning, but nothing ever seems to come out of it 🫠. The HSKMock website has some unfinished and not-that-great testing and practice features that are clearly meant to connect in interact with something bigger, but it's just not there. There's also no info on them besides them being a Singaporean based company and apparently they now also design the questions for the HSK? It's not a big deal, I'm just nosy hahaha

 

Oh yeah, and the 有道A6 Pro arrived! So far, it's actually been working pretty damn great! I don't think I've unlocked it's full potential yet, it seems like there's some stuff to download or configure on the app, but I'm not sure yet how to do it. Nevertheless, it seems to fullfill my needs quite well: it's super fast to read and it pops up a nifty dictionary definition along with the pronunciation being spoken out loud (and including sample sentences from 有道 too, which is a good addition). You can also scan full sentences and it'll translate everything at once, then you can click on individual words to look up their definition if you want. You can bookmark words and sentences and they'll show up on your phone (which also keeps an history of what you scanned). There's also an AI that does something but it seems to be focused towards english-learning (and they're a bit stupid too, sorry AI)

 

Overall quite a great little device! Definitely recommend if there's anyone like me that finds phones troublesome in some situations, it'll definitely change how I do sentence mining (hope to see pleco on it one day too 😝). Now I'm thinking I should've had this idea sooner hahahaha

[Luxi]

Hi @liqi, thank you 😻 for starting this topic. Normally, I can't resist a clever gadget, and you introduced one I hadn't even heard of (out in my rural retreat} Not only it sounded interesting but also useful, I have piles of books I bought but can't read because the typeface is too small or blurred, or because the unknown words are too many for me. This little gadget seemed more irresistible than most, and now I have one from Amazon UK.

 

It wasn't easy to come up with the right search term in Amazon, but "scan translator pen" hit the right place after trying several different search prompts. Amazon UK has many though they are listed in some disarray. It's hard to see how they differ, there are some in the >£100 category but no better or different than those in the prevailing price range (between £30 and £50). The main differences between them seem due to different versions of the same software. The latest versions seem to have around 140-ish languages for on-line use (including simplified and traditional Chinese as well as Cantonese) and about 10 for off-line use, no doubt Chinese will be one of them. By the way, Temu has also quite a few though they will come set up for Chinese users, though the Ui language itself is not a problem because it is changeable in the Settings, and I think the software can also be updated in the device Settings.

 

As @liqi posted above, this little gadget is amazing, it has multiple functions and promises masses of fun. It isn't faster than searching on a phone or even an old fashioned dictionary, but no doubt speed will improve with practice. I still have lots to look at, but one useful trick I already discovered is: one can dictate the Chinese text (in Voice Search) to test one's pronunciation, yay!

 

One note of warning, watch out for possible trojans, hackers and other nasties, especially since this is going to be connected to your network at least some of the time. Make sure your devices and network security are 100% up-to-date. I haven't yet been able to see what's installed in the system but will get it scanned thoroughly. I'll post here if I see something suspicious. Please everybody, be alert!

 

Edited February 10, 2025 at 05:33 PM by Luxi
To remove link to a disappointing buggy product

[liqi]

On 2/8/2025 at 11:33 PM, Luxi said:

Hi @liqi, thank you 😻 for starting this topic. Normally, I can't resist a clever gadget, and you introduced one I hadn't even heard of

Glad to hear that my suggestion was useful for someone!! Mine's been definitely a game changer, I really wondered why I never had this idea before 😂. I don't know how that one compares to the youdao pen, but I definitely find it faster than using my phone for unknown characters since I would need to OCR it (which I find a bit clunky), use the strokes search or use the handwriting if I can't identify the radical. Here I just slide down the pen and it's done 😄 and no need to risk getting distracted too hahaha. It also says out loud the pronunciation of what I scan, but I disabled the audio in the video because my upstairs neighbor was having a "little" fight lmao. Although I'm not in such a level yet (and tbh idk if I'm really interested in it), it can also interpret passages for classical texts. It'll tell you which book it comes from, the context and how you can use it in literary contexts, quite useful. I like to use the little AI's too to test my pronunciation, it actually understands me almost always, go me!

 

On 2/8/2025 at 11:33 PM, Luxi said:

It's hard to see how they differ, there are some in the >£100 category but no better or different than those in the prevailing price range (between £30 and £50)

I'm not sure which ones they sell on Amazon UK (seems to be all off-brand), but at least the ones here in China contain mostly unnecessary extra features for Chinese learning. It's a gadget marketed towards school kids learning English, so the expensive-priced options contains functions such as grammar explanation, math equation solvers, conversational capabilities, gaokao practice etc. I'm sure it's pretty useful for kids, but not much use for us just looking up Chinese words hahahaha. The only function that looks cool is that the expensive models can read multiple lines at the same time, which sounds pretty useful

 

The only point I have to complain is that it's not very useful for traditional chinese, which is sligtly dissapointing. Not much of an issue since I don't have much traditional media, but there's a book in traditional I've been super excited to read and the pen ain't that useful. It understands the hanzi just fine and gives me the simplified form, which is useful enough, but it can't recognize whole words in traditional (like it won't recognize 頭髮 as 头发, it'll give me a result splitting 頭 and 髮. It still translates it, so it's usable, but there's no dictionary entry). Maybe the more expensive models are better, idk

 

edit: just remembered something I forgot to say, the saved words inside the pen that sync with your phone can also be exported as a text file on your PC! You just plug the pen on your pc and you'll be able to save a text file with the words and their definition. The definition is pretty rough, it's not as useful as pleco's, but it's not bad either if you plan on converting them into anki cards later 

 

On 2/8/2025 at 11:33 PM, Luxi said:

One note of warning, watch out for possible trojans, hackers and other nasties

I'm quite glad you unexpectedly brought this up, because I've actually already hacked this thing wide open already hahahaha 😂. The youdao pen has a pretty glaring bug on their update system, which is pretty exploitable (although not easy to do remotely, so I wouldn't be too worried) and allows you to rewrite the little OS as you wish. I reported it to NetEase and they replied with a a "WONT FIX" 🫠 so 没办法 I guess. I managed to dump and decrypt all of the dictionaries (xiandai hanyu cidian and the oxford chinese dictionary), which is probably something that would bother the publishers, so idk if it's smart for NetEase to ignore it.... but oh well, not my issue I suppose (I won't release it, it was just a fun little nerd experiment heh). Btw, their license for xiandai hanyu cidian expires on 2055, so don't buy one if you expect to use it for 30 years . Now I just need to get Doom running on this thing....

 

It packs some pretty cool custom tech though! I expected them to just slap some generic OCR on it and call it a day, but they have a dedicated AI hardware chip running a custom OCR model. They clearly put quite some effort into this, there's also some stubbed chatgpt files, so maybe chatgpt integration was planned at some time? Who knows, maybe they'll integrate DeepSeek into it now xD

[Luxi]

I hope you're still happy with your pen @liqi , good to know what to expect of a good gadget.

 

Sadly, I have fallen off with mine. Bugs and bad software started to appear within minutes of real life use on an actual book yesterday. The scan process is fiddly as I expected, and I could have lived with that. But I can't live with a bad dictionary and pathetic translations (when they appear). Not to mention and many other failings in the software, which also seems to have a tendency to crash for no reason. All very disappointing. 

 

I removed the link to the Amazon UK product on my previous post lest anyone is tempted to try it. My pen will be making its way back to Amazon this week. Fortunately for me, I'm happy reading digital texts, but find flashy gadgets with coloured lights very alluring.