For serious students of Mandarin who use electronic dictionaries, there’s really only one game in town, Pleco Software.
This small New York company has been producing its excellent software for Palm and Windows Mobile devices for nearly a decade, and offers electronic versions of some of the best dictionaries around for native English speakers, including John De Francis’ ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary.
Last month the company released Pleco for the iPhone and iPod touch, which is available in a free version and as a full-feature package for US$149.95. The wait has been worth it, especially for devoted Pleco users.
Having tried all three platforms, I found the iPhone version the easiest to use (I tested it on a second generation iPod touch). There are no major changes in functionality from the Palm and Window Mobile versions, but the iPhone’s interface and processing power takes Pleco to a new level.
Everything runs smoother and quicker, whether searching for definitions in English or Chinese or scrolling through one of the multiple dictionaries that Pleco offers. And the iPhone’s slick graphics make the experience all the more sweeter: fly through a long list of words with the flick of a finger and get an instantaneous response wherever you tap.
Searching for a word in Chinese or English is simple. Tap the search bar at the top of the screen, and type English or Hanyu Pinyin on the pop-up keyboard. Or you can input Chinese characters by scrolling through a page of radicals arranged by their number of strokes. For the die-hards, there’s also an option to use Zhuyin Fuhao (注音符號) (commonly called bopomofo).
But the easiest way to input Chinese characters is to draw them with your finger using Pleco’s well-designed handwriting recognizer, available as an “add-on” purchase. This feature is great for looking up an unfamiliar word, particularly if you want to avoid the laborious task of searching for the character by radical. The screen is highly responsive to the touch and you’re given plenty of space to scribble, much more than the iPhone’s own Chinese input system. The software is very good at guessing what character you’re trying to write, no matter how crudely rendered — something that beginner students will appreciate.
Pleco has a seemingly endless list of features that cater to the student of Mandarin. Some notable functions: tap a button to hear a recorded pronunciation, which alternates between male and female voices; tap another to instantly switch between traditional and simplified characters; one software plug-in provides animations showing the stroke order for each character, which is an excellent tool for practicing your calligraphy skills. Many of these functions are available as add-on purchases or come with the full software package.
A particularly nice feature is the pop-up definitions, which can be viewed anywhere you see a Chinese character. Say you’re looking at the entry for heping (和平, peace), you can view the meanings for each part of this compound: tap directly on he (和), and a balloon instantly appears with the character’s definition and pronunciation; the same goes for tapping on ping (平). This cross-referencing function is also useful for reading the example sentences in Chinese provided in many entries.
The pop-up definitions also come in handy with a Pleco add-on unique to the iPhone: The Reader is a built-in Web browser and document viewer. The browser is set up so that when you copy Chinese text from a Web site, it automatically appears on the pasteboard, where you can tap on each character for the pop-up definition and pronunciation. You can actually do this directly in the browser by switching to “live mode,” but this makes Web pages slower to load (according to the manual, this function is still at the “experimental” stage).
The Reader also has a nifty feature that lets you upload and download documents from iPhone to your computer via a Wi-Fi network. Unfortunately, the document viewer doesn’t work well. The Web browser is supposed to let you view Microsoft Word documents and text files, but I only got a blank screen. Pleco is aware of the problem and is working on it for the future releases.
There is one thing missing from the iPhone version that some old-hand Pleco users will miss: the ability to create flashcards, which is also slated for a future release. And a note for new users: even though the basic search functions are intuitive, plan to spend time reading the manual and online forums to get the most out of Pleco.
All in all, Pleco has taken advantage of the iPhone platform to make a great piece of software even better. The free version, available on iTunes, comes with the open source CEDICT dictionary. There are three paid packages available, ranging from US$50 for the basic bundle to US$150 for the full-featured version, which includes seven dictionaries. The add-on features, such as the handwriting recognizer and document reader, cost between US$10 to US$15 if you don’t purchase the full version. And in a sign of goodwill, those who have either the Palm or Windows Mobile versions can transfer their licenses to their iPhone for free.
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