

Using devices with large amounts of processing power, backed with cloud-networking, these apps enable near real-time voice communication even if you don’t speak a word of Chinese. Such apps promise to be able to receive Chinese audio as input, semantically understand the meaning behind what was said, translate it into English and then read it out. Similar to instant character translation, voice translation is the most technically ambitious kind of translation app currently available. These kinds of translators are often less comprehensive than ordinary translators, but they’re especially useful for writers who want to memorize some new words and build up a strong core vocabulary. These allow you to not just see a translation but also see an associated picture and see it in use in a video. If you’re looking for a translator that’s more memorable and immersive than just written and audio translators, you can look into a picture or video translator. These applications allow a user to look up individual words or characters, and understand not just a single possible reading of them, but rather all possible readings and uses. Should a learner want to go deep, rather than broad, they’d be better served by a word dictionary translator. Of course, most translation software, whether on a computer or a smartphone, only functions as a translator for a large portion of text. Then, this character data is instantly translated by the app (with the assistance of online, cloud-based translating tech) into readable English. Using smartphone cameras, this kind of app uses a technology called Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify all Chinese characters within a given field of view. Online translators have been around for a long time, but new mobile apps have taken them to a whole new level. Then, all you have to do is go in and do a little cleanup to make sentences sound natural and correct mistakes. You can often produce a translation that’s halfway decent and catches the gist of each sentence. The reason to use an online, browser-based translator is for translating larger passages. While these so-called “machine translation” apps have come a long way in recent years, they still make numerous grammatical errors and the syntax can come out rather awkward.įurthermore, specific to Chinese, these programs often horribly mistranslate complex chengyu idioms (which makes sense, because the meaning lies in the connotation and history of these phrases). However, the key word here is comprehensible. Sites like Google Translate and Bing Translator can very rapidly translate whole passages of Chinese into comprehensible English. These are online, browser-based translators. The first and most familiar kind of translation app is the kind that any learner will encounter while surfing the next. We’ll talk more about FluentU later in this post! Online Translators It’s important to actively learn in addition to using translators, and FluentU helps you do exactly that. You may even decide to mix and match!Īlso consider using any of these apps in combination with FluentU. There are five main types of Chinese translation apps out there in the digital marketplace, and we’re going to explore each one in-depth so you can make the best choices. (Download) 5 Different Types of Chinese Translation Apps
#English to chinese translator with voice pdf#
This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. Always check for mistakes-there will be errors! Learners with different skill levels will use translators in different ways Voice Translation (Bonus): Skype Translator.Voice Translator (Runner Up): Baidu Translate.Picture & Video Translation (Winner): Papago.Word Dictionary (Runner Up): MGDB Chinese.Instant Character Translator (Runner Up): Purple Culture.Instant Character Translation (Winner): Waygo.Online Translators (Winner): Google Translate.Our Winners for the Best Translation App in Each Category.5 Different Types of Chinese Translation Apps.Nowadays, learners have a wide range of online translation apps available for easy use. We have something at our disposal which makes Chinese reading a whole lot easier: translation apps. While it might be somewhat of an exaggeration to say that Chinese is the absolute hardest written language out there, it’s definitely close to taking the prize and it’s pretty difficult to master.Ĭhinese may be a challenge, but it’s not one that modern-day learners of Chinese can’t handle.
