English pronounciation function

Xjdm

Member
Hi I am a new Pleco user. is there a way to enter Han zhi characters then select a definition then listen to the pronounciation of the selected English word? many thanks and happy holidays!
 

12887114

Member
Hello, i was also wondering the same thing.

I very much like the flash card system , and i use that everyday for learning chinese.

but what i really wanted was a system that also goes the other way. that can do the english pronunciation. is that in the works by any chance?

My chinese colleagues always comment and are so impressed for when i use PLECO, and hwo ti pronounces out the chinese words, but of course they're looking for something of the same

Or, as i realise this would in fact be a lot of work to add all the sound clips to each word,... is there an attachment somewhere in the program that i can record my own voice to provide the audio sample? or that the PLECO english community could 'crowd-supply' these audio clips or something?

or if its really not, would you be able to recommend a program that offers the same kind of top notch services as PLECO, but is more aimed for the chinese users wanting to review their english.

thank you this far for your amazing program
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
English pronunciation is currently waiting on a more reliable solution to English audio on Android - a huge % of the potential market for this feature would be Android users in China, and while we do offer English audio on iOS and on official Google versions of Android through the system-supplied English text-to-speech functions, we don't have a reliable solution for Android users without official Google Android, which is what the vast majority of Chinese Android users are.

So we're trying to license an English TTS system for Android (which we would then offer as a paid add-on) and assuming we manage to do that we'd then be able to move ahead with English audio flashcards. We are also working on adding the ability to insert your own audio in flashcards, but we don't think that will be a practical solution for most people.
 

12887114

Member
ok thank you. that actually explains a lot.
Yes i use an 'unofficial' version of android. the MIUI android system, however it seems to be official enough as there is a huge amount of support for it, and it can still download all the apps from google play, as well as all of the chinese ones of course.

But you say you've already got English audio on iOS? Ok i will have to check that out.

I think the ability to add your own audio would be good, or at least as a stepping stone waiting from the official audio flash cards.

I also think you are in a nice position, because you already have a well established foreign user base, of which usually works with a fair amount of chinese who are constantly impressed by the offline functionality of PLECO. and considering the options that they have, and i've check out a few of them.. even ones with some sort of flashcard ability. ..... 百词斩(maybe is the best here), 单词锁屏, even 有道, they mainly offer online capabilities, which of course makes it difficult to find out words easily.
Other programs like duolingo, memrise also offer language & flash card services but you have to submit to their learning style... which often you don't want to do.
and ankidroid- while amazing for what you can put on it, (for instance put a whole tv show on it- and convert the audio & subtitles into flash cards) it requires a learning curve just to use it.
People mainly want to use a functional, reliable system... and i think that;s exactly what you've got. I think your updated product will be very well received in the chinese market.

Please keep up the good work. Looking forward to the future updates... especially on the 'non-official' versions of android
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
We do offer it on iOS, but not currently in flashcards, only in headwords / example sentences - there are options to enable buttons for those in Settings. (off by default since on iOS most of our users are English speakers learning Chinese)

And yes, MIUI is certainly pretty close to official at this point - I'm actually very happy to see "unofficial" Android doing well, it's generally great for Pleco since the more app stores there are, the more benefit we get from having a well-known brand name that can penetrate all of that confusion. (and frankly I'm much more afraid of Google getting too powerful than I am of Apple)

Once we do get an English TTS it'll actually be considerably easier to support that than to support custom audio recordings - audio recordings present a problem because now we have this giant amount of new data that we have to efficiently open / back up / etc for people.

I'm glad you're finding our flashcard system promising in its current form - we're actually working really really hard to come up with a much more streamlined way to configure it, we're hoping that soon we'll be able to offer all of the benefits of Anki without any of the setup hassles.
 
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