I want to buy one of those electronic dictionaries that you see Taiwanese students use. However I would like to get one more orientated for foreigners to learn, maybe with an English menu.
Does anybody have experience using these gizmos…Besta, New Oxford English Dictionary. Do you know how much and where to buy , IN TAIWAN.
I’m at the stage now where I hear a lot of words but it’s not easy for me to look them up. I can use Hanyu Pinyin (preferred) or B-P-M-F if I have to as the input. I especially want this chinese-english translation function. One that pronounces the words semi-clearly would be good too.
Also is a PDA a better idea. I don’t want to spend too much money though…anybody been down this road?? I think a couple of thousand NT would be much more reasonable than 8-9000 NT, I dont think I would use a PDA for anything else and want to spend that much!
Heado,
I’ve had one for several years - not the type you mentioned though. Mine cost me NT$7000 5 years ago and I definitely figure I got much more than that out of it. It could be converted to an English or Hanyu (simplified and long form) menu and with some practice and rigorous attention to stroke order you could input written characters saving yourself the radical page flick. It had at least 6 input methods, including Zhu yin and Pinyin. It also had some great character games and a reasonable collection of poems. The times I liked it best was when I was trying to zip through newspapers…until you cop the Taiwanese headline!
Drawback was that it was definitely targeted at the Chinese to English user in that the Chinese/English dictionary was much more limited than say the little red Oxford Chinese/English/ English/Chinese dictionary.
I’d imagine they’re 20x better now!
Anyone else on current models? Or is a PDA with a dictionary card better?
HG
PS: Just realised I hadn’t answered you post! Yes, I have used the very thin dictionaries students have and can be bought for a couple of grand. Didn’t notice any English menu, it did have pinyin from scratchy memory and the vocab was pretty good. Nowhere near the above mentioned toy though.
Be careful with your money. I have a few students who insist on bringing those pieces of shite to my classes. I call them such because I’ve tested them on several ocassions, and they are about 80% accurate at best, and often miss the finer points. For example, most of them translate dang(1)ran(2) as “of course,” when the more accurate translation is “certainly” or “surely.” In a piece of prose, these two meanings significantly alter the meaning of the sentence. I still say a good Lanbridge Bo Po Mo Fo dictionary is best for Guoyu language study.
It takes the same amount of time to look up a character as it does to type it in and get an innacurate or vague translation. But do what you want–someone else obviously feels he had gained an appropriate return his investment. I’d just never recommend this to a student.
I have a visor prism with the oxford dictionary and the collapsible keyboard(an absolute must for emails, papers and long letters). It works pretty well for me. the only problemn is the expense. I can justify it because my PDA saves me between 1-3 hours a week, by always being handy. You will need a decent computer for it though. The hotsync feature can be a lifesaver. The oxford character recognition software for when you write a character is pretty good, but the dictionary seems somewhat limited. I’m going to have to research if I can add characters and/or phrases(Chinese has the most idioms of any language).
You’re looking at a cost of $9500NT + $40USD for something like my set-up in Taiwan. I’ve heard mixed reviews about the electronic dictionaries and the good ones are similiar in price to my PDA, but without all the nifty features.
I use my PDA for more than I thought I would. It really is worth the money you spend for it. It has a weak alarm, a date book, to do list and memo. You can download quite a few programs and some of them have very useful features(such as the ability to draw a map). Compare the prices and features and let us know what you picked and why.
On the Pleco site (www.pleco.com I think) they say that the next version of the software - due soon and free to current users - will include the ability to add custom (user-defined) dictionary definitions.
I’ve seen Visor handhelds for 3000NT in NOVA, so if you could do without the fold-up keyboard you could get the setup for about 6000NT or less. A friend managed to get hold of the Palm collapsible keyboard for 1000NT online, don’t know where or if it’s still available.
I am thinking of buying one of those electronic dictionaries with which you can input chinese characters with a pen.
Does anyone have any suggestions? Are they any good at all?
In that case, where should I go to buy them? (I live in Taoyuan, but suggestions for Taipei are also OK)
Which brand, type should I buy?
Please search the archives, there are numerous discussions on this.
I’ll let this thread stand (in case somebody else has time to add links for you – I have an urgent job to get out so don’t have time) for a few days and then will merge and/or delete it.
Could anyone recommend a good English/Chinese electronic dictionary? I want to input English words and view the Chinese Pinyin equivalent. Most of the ones I’ve checked out so far in Taiwan have Zhuyin output. Any suggestions?
Rather than going for a hardwired electronic dictionary (I have 3 and I hardly use them now), a flexible option is to buy a Win CE or Palm palmtop device. There’s tons of great software out there and much of it for free. A cheap Palm can be had on Ebay for about US$120 or 80 British pounds. Great apps for the Palm are the dictionary program Kdic (free and there are hundreds of free dictionaries available - you can use it while you read some Chinese text you stuck on your Palm by just highlighting text and it gives you the definition) and the flashcard program Anki (for which someone has written all the f/cs of the popular Practical A/V books).
IMHO Palmtops with the right software are best, but if you hate computers or don’t like getting too involved with setting things up, maybe the hardwired ones are your best bet.
I use a handheld PC (Dell Axim x30) with the H&H Chinese dictionary. It’s an awesome dictionary with over 70,000 words. You can choose between traditional and simplified Chinese. You can also turn on/off the PinYin. It also has voice for each word (which is very clear).
Just buy a PDA. You can use it for so much more than “just a dictionary”. ie: MP3, games, Day Timer, alarm, internet, etc. It costs about the same as a high-end dictionary anyways…
I have been interested in that program but have read that lookups are one-way (English-Chinese). I would greatly prefer a two-way system. Does a good one exist?
I have been interested in that program but have read that lookups are one-way (English-Chinese). I would greatly prefer a two-way system. Does a good one exist?[/quote]Plecodict will be released for Pocket PC soon.
There seems to be many brands and styles. I need to purchase one for a gift in Taiwan and would like to understand more about them.
Is there really any significant difference among the brands? Why?
Which features would you consider mandatory, in terms of basic usefulness and currently available, common features? Please explain the features unless it is really obvious.