popup translator

orangina

I had no idea there was a Chrome popup translator now! Very exciting!

bodawei

I think that it was released in March - I read a forum thread before I loaded it. All the comments were positive. As I say, I have no prior experience but it seems okay to me; it provides a lot of information (possibly too much?) and also in the default setting provides traditional form alongside simplified. I've decided to leave that on; trying to at least improve my reading of traditional characters. To read two character words you kind of just move your finger slightly and it gives you the word; so it does single characters and words without any problem. Even longer expressions - it picked up at least one four character expression for me. It has each tone a different colour in the pinyin but you can turn that off.

xiaophil

bodawei

I just tried it out. Seems to work pretty good upon initial inspection. Now I have to decide whether or not to stop using Firefox. Perakun was my number one reason for using Firefox, but there are other add-ons I enjoy. Hmmm. Anyway, thanks for mentioning ZhongWen.

RJ

I use perakun and words-chinese pinyin dictionary. Both of these are firefox add ons and I tend to like "words" better than perakun for quick translation of entire sentences. Perakun is good for word by word breakdown.

Outside of Firefiox (IE) I use Microsoft translator - There are so many now.

Chrome I have not tried yet.

xiaophil

RJ

I would suggest giving Chrome a whirl if you think your browser is too slow. Otherwise, forget it. I would love Firefox if it were faster.

kujuliet2

谢谢大家！ That's all very helpful! And bodawei, I had actually wondered much of the same, if popup translators would help or hinder my learning. I go back and forth on this, it seems like they have the potential to become a crutch, but at the same time they're immensely helpful for someone like me (transitioning from intermediate to upper intermediate) to read more difficult websites without spending six hours with a dictionary.

I figured I could just find a good one, and then decide whether or not it's a good thing for me to use it. :)

Thanks again, everyone!

xiaophil

I have found one minor drawback with ZhongWen pop-up translator. It can't read characters that are inputed into a text box before pressing reply. In theory, our Chinese is so good, that we should never doubt what we have written, so it shouldn't be a problem, 啊啊.

bodawei

Hmm, haven't tested it to that extent - interesting. Personally I prefer to write/speak my bad Chinese and hope that someone will correct me. I am kind of amazed at the Chinese I see written here by poddies; it is either way above my level or poor Chinese expression but I would never know. I can usually pick the English written in Chinese, but the Chinese written in Chinese I just don't know whether I should use it as a model or not. And ZhongWen won't help on that point. (I think this may be an old discussion on these boards. How do we know what is good or bad Chinese?) One reason why I rarely venture into your otherwise excellent 中文吧 :) I think that maybe ChinesePod could help us out by accrediting certain poddies whose Chinese we should be able to trust? Apart from some native speakers like suansuanru, Changye is currently our only benchmark, what do you think?

xiaophil

Yeah, there is undoubtedly a lot of poor Chinese going on at 中文吧. Your point is valid. Having some people designated as near or at native level would be helpful. Perhaps only Changye reaches that mark?

That said, for me 中文吧 is just a way for me to get in the habit of expressing myself in Chinese and finding out exactly what I can't even begin to express, and then go from there. This is why I recommend my students go to English corners. They always complain that it is too Chinglishy, but I think the more one talks, the more one improves, and the same goes for writing. However, it is almost definitely three steps forward and one step back. Incorrectly communicating in the same fashion over and over of course reinforces bad habits.

RJ

I do not see how pop-up translators can be a crutch. If you don't know a character or a word, you don't know it. You have two choices, look it up or continue not knowing it. Pop-ups are faster than paper dictionaries and therefore facilitate learning.

xiaophil

Exactly. It is only a crutch if someone gets lazy and doesn't even bother to read anything without the translator. Sometimes I catch myself skimming every word with perakun and then wondering what my problem is. But by in large, pop-up translators have made my studying experience much better. As kujuliet2 says, it is extremely helpful when reading newspaper articles and such where the language is quite a bit more complex than what we would see in a CPod dialog.

bababardwan

Sometimes I catch myself skimming every word with perakun and then wondering what my problem is.

...exactly. There have been times when I have caught myself doing this...mainly on long passages written in advanced Chinese discussions and then I've realised I'm skimming over words I know as well as the ones I don't. I have then made a conscious effort to avoid doing that.But I agree,as long as one is careful not to do that it definitely makes learning faster and more efficient and as RJ says if you don't know a word you don't know it and need to look it up.

bababardwan

It does however mean when I read a book or a newspaper in hard copy I find I am not as good as I thought I was

..hehe,yeah I've noticed that too. Which is why supplementing one's learning with some reading from books and the like is a good idea...if one can got a hold of such material at near one's level.

bababardwan

what's that?...nciku has a popup translator?...cool...please tell more..what search engine does it work with?