Nciku is basically an online Chinese-English dictionary and is a great tool for Mandarin scholarship students. I had a look at it a while ago and came to the conclusion that it was a social networking dictionary. You can sign up and interact with others in the nciku community, as you look up new vocabulary. It didn’t appeal to me, as I thought the concept was odd and had been happily using mdbg.net.
That said, the Handwrite Characters function, or handwriting recognition tool, is brilliant! Pinyin.info recently highlighted this feature which I have used several times.
If you’ve ever tried to translate a character, you will know that if you don’t know the radical it can take a very long time to work out. This tool makes short work of that problem.
How does it work?
Stroke order does not matter. We will find your character even if you don’t write it perfectly.
The handwriting recognition tool has been around for many years. My Chinese teacher introduced me to it a few months ago. It was part of his Chinese language Windows OS or MS word suite. Unfortunately, I run an English language version of XP and that tool is not included.
This tool/software can also be put on a PDA. A mobile handwriting recognition tool! Just the thing for long bus journeys.
I use the excellent handwriting recognition of PlecoDict http://plecodict.com
on my cheap Palm Zire 22.
Great software for searching characters on-the-go.
Thanks for that info HP. I will definitely be looking in to a PDA. That Palm Zire 22 sells for around US$90!
A mobile handwriting recognition tool! I can’t wait!