Scanning around

ningmeng
December 22, 2007, 06:20 PM posted in General Discussion

I've got a question about conveniently reading Chinese online.  My friend installed this thing called StarDict on my computer, which has a really big online dictionary.  Now, everytime I need to know either the Chinese equilivent of an english word or vise-versa, all I've got to do is scroll over it and press shift.  Its nice, 'cept there isn't any pinyin, just characters.  

 

I'm perplexed, and I'll tell you why.  Now, it might just be that this is how StarDict goes, no pinyin, but I know that a few times I've been piddling around on the internet and some magical thing pops up that just starts telling me the characters and pinyin of an english word and the english and pinyin of characters.  Is this some sort of microsoft program, or a feature of the microsoft Asian character package I'm not aware of?

 

Point being, I'd like to scrolly and see pinyin.  I'm sure some of you savy ladies and gents out there have much better patience and tinkering skills than I do for this sort of stuff.  Any help?

 

thanks 

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RJ
December 22, 2007, 06:51 PM

ningmeng, if you use ChinesePera-kun, which is a firefox add on you can do this nicely but it only works if you are using firefox. I have a program called power word that works like yours but I think if I knew how I could change the settings to fix that but its really a chinese program and I have never taken the time to figure out how. Others may have better advice but pera-kun is really nice, it not only shows the pinyin but if you are dealing with a compound word it shows both the combined definition and the individual stand alone character definitions - another thing missing from power word. (or another thing I dont know how to turn on.) ChinesePera-kun is free btw.

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bazza
December 22, 2007, 08:28 PM

I prefer Hanzibar myself, there's a small charge for the full version though but it's worth it. http://realimaginary.com/HanziBar/

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RJ
December 22, 2007, 08:53 PM

I will try it. Bazza - you were looking for some childrens fables from China and I think someone else was but they have some here but in hanzi only. About three quarters down the page are the links. Some other interesting stuff too. http://www-personal.umich.edu/%7Edporter/sampler/sampler.html#fps

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ambition
December 23, 2007, 02:07 AM

pinyin would make much misunderstanding。 many chinese characters have the same pinyin