Free Chinese Translation Software

Hi everyone,

It's David Lancashire from Popup Chinese. You may know us as the suppliers of the free Adso dictionary that ships with Plecodict. This is a quick note to inform you all we've just released free Chinese translation software. This downloadable Windows application offers the same functionality as expensive machine translation engines. It is part of our ongoing research efforts into improving Chinese-English machine translation.

The Popup Chinese translation engine combines rules-based approaches with techniques from more cutting-edge statistical machine translation. It lets you add words and phrases, works offline when you don't have an Internet connection, and taps into the Google translation service to improve translation quality when you are. This results in:

* total control over your own translations
* really good default translations of proper nouns, dates, etc.
* your own private dictionary for adding words and phrases

This is our first beta release, so we're soliciting suggestions and feedback on improvements (including bug reports) before rolling out a Mac version. That said, feedback is very welcome at service@popupchinese.com. If you find yourself adding words and phrases to the software, sending the log file to us is an excellent way to contribute to the free Adso dictionary, and - in turn - Plecodict. If you're interested in helping out but don't do much translation, you can also help add words and phrases using our online Chinese dictionary.

Best from Beijing,

--david

Popup Chinese English Translator first impressions

You should have a way to type in feedback and "send" it directly from the program. Something to gather statistics too (with an "opt-in" of course). But, something that gathered statistics for my personal use would also be cool. I could elect to send THAT summary up periodically, after I saw what it would be sending, etc.

I was really hoping for a "tool-tip" style pop up that would translate on the fly, and allow me to just instantly "look-up" words that I didn't know.

No way to see a pronunciation guide (again, for unrecognized characters).

Ability to generate study lists would be great. It obviously would have to be in Pleco format! 8)

Looking at the help window, then closing help closed the entire application! Argh.

Window resize is strange. Resizing outer window doesn't affect inner windows.
Resizing right inner window large, THEN resizing left window large cause right window to be unresizable (no handle)

Unable to change font size.
Left and right don't keep in Sync. Clicking on the left side doesn't show where on the right something is to be found.
Pasting a table of characters (from Harry Potter book) on left results in a run-on list on the right. Not easy to line up "new lines" on the left with the items on the right. Paragraph separation on the left is not shown on the right.

Highlighting phrases on the left sometimes causes all text to disappear.

The word "NEWLINE" appears on the right instead of a newline.

Very impressive context translations (sometimes). After I changed 人物表 to "cast of characters", it automatically changed 主要 from "important" to "main" and added a "The" as in "The main cast of characters".

For my local translation I changed from "magic school" to "school of magic". I was tempted to change to "School of Majick", but started to worry that might get sent in automatically as a translation alternative, or that it might affect other translation pieces in my stuff...

So, need some explanation and guidelines on capitalization (does it make a difference?), alternate spellings (how to mark same word, but "dialect" style spelling).

Would like ability to add annotations to any translations, and also perhaps option to extract the sentence as an example. Certainly note the location of the new phrase in whatever form is being saved for new translation. That part of the dialog needs to be more comprehensive.

Entire interface is way to geeky (I'm a geek too, but my wife would never be able to use it as is).

Just some first thoughts.

I'd be interested in what others thought of it.

My test text below:
主要人物表
哈利•波特 本书主人公，霍格沃茨魔法学校一年级学生
佩妮 哈利的姨妈
弗农•德思礼 哈利的姨父
达力 哈利的表哥，德思礼夫妇的儿子
阿不思•邓布利多 霍格沃茨魔法学校校长
麦格教授 霍格沃茨魔法学校副校长

斯内普教授 霍格沃茨魔法学校魔药课教师
海格 霍格沃茨魔法学校钥匙保管员，将猎场看守
罗恩 哈利在魔法学校的好朋友
赫敏 哈利在魔法学校的好朋友
纳威 哈利在魔法学校的同学
马尔福 哈利在魔法学校的同学
伏地魔 杀死哈利父母的恶魔头，被人称为"神秘人"
奇洛教授 霍格沃茨魔法学校黑魔法防御术课教师

One more point for now. How to correct pluralization? Grammar? (word placement?)

Last line, for example was translated as

Chilo Professor Hogue Worts school of magic black magic defense technique Teachers

Click to expand...

Should be "teacher" (not capitalized, not plural). Also, should be "Professor Chilo", etc.

When should one attempt to translate more correctly, and when should one leave it with the literal (although grammatically incorrect) version?