Please post info on good Chinese software you like or constantly are using. For example:
Word Processors
Translation Memory
C-E, E-C Dictionaries/Glossaries
Chinese Learning Software
Chinese Text Editors (HTML, XML, Conversion,etc.)
Database Software
And any others that you use that are not covered in the topics above.
Thanks
Konglong
I posted some info here on Office XP’s Chinese addons:
For html, it still use good ol’ fashioned notepad (and it handles big5 great (via njstar) )
I’ve got some Far East Chinese dictionary…but I’ve never bothered installing and trying it out.
At one time I used Chinese windows, but then found out that some games wouldn’t install on non-English windows.
NJStar 4.33 www.njstar.com
Wenlin 2.7 www.wenlin.com
Babylon www.babylon.com
XML Spy www.xmlspy.com
Wordfast www.champollion.net
ForeignDesk http://sourceforge.net/projects/foreigndesk
Hi,
I’m using the following:
Chinese system: Win2000 Professional with Traditional and Simplified Chinese IMEs (free from Microsoft)
NJStar – VERY occasionally only, usually for convenience in translating from GB to BIG-5 code if I’m going to use translation memory software to work on a file (my TMs are in traditional characters, but I’m not sure if they’re really BIG-5 or Unicode; anyway, this way works even though I’m not quite sure why);
Trados – really expensive but the most convenient thing I’ve found for heavy-duty professional translation from Chinese; if you avoid their constant updates (just update every 2 years or so) it’s a bit cheaper.
WinXP or Win2000 Professional handle multiple languages so well, you really don’t need NJStar if you want to avoid the expense. But being congenitally lazy, I like to be able to highlight a character in a text file and find the pronunciation with one click of the mouse, so I can look it up faster if I end up using a paper dictionary.
BUT – it’s the weekend, so I think I’ll check out the stuff that Konglong has listed! Thanks, Konglong!
Terry
Hi Konglong
I just had a ramble around the ForeignDesk link site you posted. Very impressive it looks, only … what is the software they have released? What’s it for?
use the stuff you see on http://www.linux.org.tw/ Non cutting edge me
knows about and uses xcin and GNU Emacs’ mule for input, pydict to
look up meanings. I found a “c2t” program that can turn characters
into pinyin.
The neat thing is I didn’t have to get any bootleg or limited time
versions and still paid $0. When it’s upgrade time, again $0. Plus
the authors names are not hidden and you can meet them at meetings.
I use Wen Lin – it’s fast, easy to learn and does Chinese-English and English-Chinese equally well.
The only caveat I know of is that it only uses pinyin input.
It’s available for the Mac.
For the basic setup I use MS tools with the various language pack add-ons. This will allow reading and writing of Chinese documents and Chinese on the Internet. It all works fine, but two design assumptions do not hold for me:
(1) If you write Pinyin then you want simplified output
(2) The system design assumes you are quite fluent, know the tones of all the words you type and are comfortable selecting between similar characters.
For these reasons I liked the following tools:
NJStar Communicator you can type toneless Pinyin and the system will guess what you mean from the 2 and 3 character combinations that fit and present alternatives. For example, consider the phrase 睡覺 (shui4 jiao4 = sleep). ‘Shui4’ alone will match 3 characters, ‘Jiao4’ will match 6. If you don’t know the tone ‘Shui’ will match 4, but ‘Jiao’ has about 21. In NJStar ‘shuijiao’ will match 3 combinations 睡覺 (sleep), 水餃 (boiled dumplings), 說教 (indoctrinate). Many more advanced input systems intended for Chinese writers work this way (but cannot be used on English systems). It is very quick and great if you have trouble remembering tones.
CquickTrans looks up all the words and combinations from a Chinese phrase and gives the dictionary meanings. Takes a lot of work out of translations. Words can also be added to a ‘study list’ to be used later as flash cards. Does not really make a full translation, but it is a great aid to reading.
In Windows 2000 and XP it is possible to install Chinese software, which will increase the range of translation products that can be used. There are some quite good ones (Dr Eye for example). Unfortunatly they do tend to assume full Chinese literacy and poor English.
I thought more people would respond to this post. Are the numbers getting fewer on Oriented, or has everyone started their summer vacations?
Kong
Summer vacations? What’s that…?
When it comes to chinese software I’m in a somehow bad mood now. I had been using Unionway to read and write Chinese and Japanese on Windows, even used it to write my thesis at university, because it gave me the opportunity to use those two languages together with German and English in the same document. Unfortunately, the behaviour of the fonts is somehow strange now: Characters (chinese and japanese) have the double width they had originally, but still stand on the correct positions so that I can only see the left half of a character, then the next one starts…
I liked Unionway over Twinbridge because Twinbridge (at least during my university days) had two different packages for Chinese and Japanese, they probably never thought of people using BOTH languages.
So far, I haven’t found an equivalent for Unionway with the same comfort under Windows. I could probably get Win2000 and my problems were gone, but I have to say after I saw Mac OS X in action, it looks really good (and I’m not talking about Aqua) for my purpose - though I can’t get used to a box I don’t know what’s happening inside (after all, back in the 80’s, we still used to solder our own home computers…).
There was a very fine piece of software during the good old DOS days, written by a Dr. Wang at the german university of Essen: XingXing/Stars. That program had the best input method I’ve ever encountered so far. Based on Pinyin, the dictionary and the algorithms to access it were great. You could enter a whole sentence without caring for character selection: As soon as the program recognised a meaning (words or whole phrases), it would choose the appropriate characters. Of course, you could choose manually, but you seldom had to do so - his hit rate was excellent. If I could just have that input method within a modern OS… During my time at NCHU, with XingXing I could easily “outrun” any fellow student using ET3, where they had to select every single character…
I can’t say much about other software as I’m a bit old fashioned in some aspects: I prefer “real” dictionaries (the bigger the better) I can throw after people… (try that with a Dr. Eye CD!)
Got a burner?
I’m sure this has already been covered in a thread somewhere, so SIA (sorry in advance) if I’ve missed it.
What software will allow you to highlight Chinese text (that you’ve cut & pasted from a website, for example), and display the pronunciation (pinyin or zhuyin)? I am able to do that on my friends’ computers who have Chinese Windows & Office (at least in zhuyin to the right or top of the Chinese characters).
That’s the one thing I’m lacking with Win98 & the IME’s… I supppose if Win2000/XP has that ability then I should finally upgrade.
Or of course, if I weren’t lazy (& a little scared), I would follow Dan’s advice – repartition & install Linux 
Don’t worry Dan, I finally got the external 60 GB drive working w/firewire & it’s fast! So I’m going to try it soon!
TIA,
Matthew
I have been using NJ Star recently. I like the instant annotations of pinyin to the Chinese text.
Have a older version of Twinbridge that has served quite well.
For hassle free e-mail in AOL, I downloaded MS Global IME and read/write in Netscape Mail ver.7.
To translate an entire webpage, Transwiz is extremely quick. Will also translate a character or phrase as the mouse hovers (English or Chinese)
KE6JOI
[quote=“ironlady”]Hi,
I’m using the following:
Chinese system: Win2000 Professional with Traditional and Simplified Chinese IMEs (free from Microsoft)
NJStar – VERY occasionally only, usually for convenience in translating from GB to BIG-5 code if I’m going to use translation memory software to work on a file (my TMs are in traditional characters, but I’m not sure if they’re really BIG-5 or Unicode; anyway, this way works even though I’m not quite sure why);
Trados – really expensive but the most convenient thing I’ve found for heavy-duty professional translation from Chinese; if you avoid their constant updates (just update every 2 years or so) it’s a bit cheaper.
WinXP or Win2000 Professional handle multiple languages so well, you really don’t need NJStar if you want to avoid the expense. But being congenitally lazy, I like to be able to highlight a character in a text file and find the pronunciation with one click of the mouse, so I can look it up faster if I end up using a paper dictionary.
BUT – it’s the weekend, so I think I’ll check out the stuff that Konglong has listed! Thanks, Konglong!
Terry[/quote]
Hi Terry,
since you seem to be the most knowledgeable person on this board about the latest electronic gadgetry & chinese :mrgreen: have you had any experience with C<->E dictionaries for Pocket PC (as opposed to Palm OS) ? I never had a PDA before, and I’m considering getting the new Toshiba PDA + cellphone (from Sprint PCS) wich runs MS Pocket PC – I’ve done a quick search on the web, and I only came up with this Pocket-PC-based dictionary:
ectaco.com/software/item.php … agelang=23
Thanks,
Orlando
I use winxp 98/2K/XP Chinese Traditional interchangeablly for OS. I sometimes install mandrake linux Chinese Traditional to play with.
I use to try all the Intermediate Chinese viewers and IMEs for english ENV when I was still in my fatherland. Unionway, NJStar, Twinbridge, Chinese Star Mview, Kanjiview and many others I coundn’t mention. To my believe, nothing is better than the native Chinese OS itself. Everything looks better and works better. Right now I’m using Win2K on to login to segue on the same computer I have dualboot to WinXP. I have 3 Virtual PC installed upon www.connectix.com virtual PC. These vpcs include Win98Japanese, Win98Korean, and Win98English.
I sometimes need to test software of different languages on different OSes and versions and that’s when VPC comes in handy.
For translation tools, you can access my bookmarks. I’m truly interested in development of language tools, dictionaries, localization tools and software publishing technologies. Have a look at my bookmarks geocities.com/anton_xie/favorites.html
For Chinese dico, I love dr.eye 2002 best. It’s slick and it gets the words I want.
For IME, I use Microsoft New Phonetic (Weiruan xinzhuyin). Since I have a pet aversion against Zhuyin, I just switch it to RomaPinyin and it serves my purpose. I hate OpenZhuyin and Zhiran Shurufa.
cheers
anton xie
One year later, I have come across some new software as well as some old that now has better Asian language support. I will also post some of the old software previously posted.
[color=green]PC[/color]
Dreamweaver MX 2004 HTML Editor - Supports UTF-8
Wenlin 3.1 - Text Editor, Dictionaries, Pinyin Conversion - Supports Multiple Encodings
NJStar 4.35 Chinese WP
Babylon Pro Language Glossaries - Not yet Unicode compliant
Systran Premium Machine Translation - Expensive
NJStar Universal Code Convertor 2.30 Convertor amongst different encodings - Packaged with NJStar Communicator
[color=green]PDA[/color]
iSilo Reader Converts multiple language HTML documents to a reader format.
Monster Chinese 2002 Nice font, Chinese on English OS