User dictionary entry from other card?

[PebbleChamp]

Hello, I need help with two things:

First, I've created a new user dictionary, but I can't figure out how to add an entry to it based on another dictionary entry. For example, one of the dictionary's has the word I am looking for, but I want to change the English meaning. When I try to select my user dictionary I can't because my user dictionary doesn't have the word in it, so in order to create the new entry I have to cut the word from the search bar, then select my dictionary and select the "new entry" button, but I then have to enter the pinyin, traditional characters, and definition myself. After finding the word in the other dictionary, how can I create a new entry in my user dictionary based on that existing entry and then just edit the meaning for my user dictionary?

Second, I have added lots of entries to my flashcards. I would really like to be able to search my flashcards (and thereby filter my search to words that I already know/ find useful) and adding them to a user dictionary seems to be the only way to do this (though I can't figure out how to add them to my user dictionary, either!). How can I then copy all of them to my new user dictionary? Thanks.

 

[mikelove]

There's not really a straightforward way to create a user dictionary entry based on a fixed entry right now, but you can do it with a slightly roundabout procedure; create a flashcard based on it, go into Organize Cards, tap on the new card to edit it, tap on "Convert to custom card," edit / save the resulting flashcard and you can then convert that to a user dictionary entry with the procedure below. (this only works with some dictionaries, though)

To convert a single card with a custom definition to a user dictionary entry, tap on the card in Organize Cards to select it, then tap on "Convert to user dictionary entry." To convert cards to user dictionary entries in bulk, bring up a list of them in Organize Cards or via Search Cards, tap on the "Edit" button at the top right corner of the screen, tap on the "Batch" button, then tap on "Convert all custom to user dict" under "Dictionary."

 

[PebbleChamp]

Mike,

Thanks for your response. Are there any plans to add a feature that will allow you to batch convert to a custom card? It's rather painstaking to have to select every single entry and change them one-by-one to a custom card, just to then be able to add it it to my user dictionary. If I remap them to my user dictionary, will it delete them from their parent dictionaries? If so, will re-downloading the parent dictionaries repopulate the replaced entries?

Also, for some reason when I do a search in English, my custom dictionary shows no results (i.e. when i click the dictionaries button to cycle through the dictionaries, it skips right over my custom dictionary), but when I search for the Chinese word (either with pinyin or characters) it finds the entry. I have tried this with about 50 different cards and I can't search the definitions of my user dictionary. Is there a special trick, or is this a bug? Thanks.

 

[mikelove]

Thanks for your response. Are there any plans to add a feature that will allow you to batch convert to a custom card? It's rather painstaking to have to select every single entry and change them one-by-one to a custom card, just to then be able to add it it to my user dictionary. If I remap them to my user dictionary, will it delete them from their parent dictionaries? If so, will re-downloading the parent dictionaries repopulate the replaced entries?

Not at the moment - it's a bit of a copyright issue to have people dumping batches of entries from licensed dictionaries to user dictionaries which they can then edit and redistribute. Though we are considering adding a dictionary entry annotation feature for a future release, which seems like it might take care of the problem in a different way.

Remapping just links the flashcards to a different dictionary, it doesn't do anything to the entries they originally linked to - our official dictionaries are read-only, we designed them that way in order to keep them space-efficient and quick to access.

Also, for some reason when I do a search in English, my custom dictionary shows no results (i.e. when i click the dictionaries button to cycle through the dictionaries, it skips right over my custom dictionary), but when I search for the Chinese word (either with pinyin or characters) it finds the entry. I have tried this with about 50 different cards and I can't search the definitions of my user dictionary. Is there a special trick, or is this a bug? Thanks.

That's because full-text search isn't supported in user dictionaries yet; it's a rather tricky thing to add, and to be honest it's having a tough time climbing up on our priority list because so few people actually use the user dictionary feature (though it's partly our fault for not advertising its presence better). It should be forthcoming in one of the 2.3/2.4/etc releases though...

 

[PebbleChamp]

That's too bad. These seem like the only ways for me to separate words I have already come across in daily usage here in China and then be able to both test myself and more quickly look them up. Regarding full-text search, the Pleco dictionaries are so expansive I tend to get too many hits for an English word (when I've forgotten), and I then have to look throughout them all to find the right word, whereas my user dictionary would give me only the one or two words that I know are the correct ones. Don't get me wrong, this is absolutely the best tool out there right now, but after paying $50 for something positioned as a "learning tool", in addition to it's dictionary functionality, I feel like it's only partially functional for that purpose which is disappointing. (Though I must commend you for your excellent and speedy customer support.)

Hopefully these updates come quickly. Character recognition is a nice gimmic (and will probably be a great short-term revenue generator), but it's not very effective if one really wants to learn the language, and I imagine that those interested in the latter will end up spending much more over the long run. Thanks again for your quick and detailed responses.

 

[mikelove]

That's too bad. These seem like the only ways for me to separate words I have already come across in daily usage here in China and then be able to both test myself and more quickly look them up. Regarding full-text search, the Pleco dictionaries are so expansive I tend to get too many hits for an English word (when I've forgotten), and I then have to look throughout them all to find the right word, whereas my user dictionary would give me only the one or two words that I know are the correct ones.

In that case, it seems like what you're really looking for is a way to mark words from flashcards in your search results - right? Either by putting them ahead of other words in sort order or by adding some sort of additional icon / marker next to them in the results list. The user dictionary isn't really designed to act as an abridged version of the built-in dictionaries, it's designed for adding new words we don't cover / proper nouns like names that you encounter a lot in your daily life / etc.

Character recognition is a nice gimmic (and will probably be a great short-term revenue generator), but it's not very effective if one really wants to learn the language, and I imagine that those interested in the latter will end up spending much more over the long run.

I think that depends on your approach to language learning - personally I'm hoping it helps people get into reading "real" Chinese sooner and overcome the fact that there may still be a lot of common characters they don't know.

There was a post on WooChinese a few days ago advocating something he calls "experience repetition" - instead of tediously cataloging every new word you encounter and eventually committing it to memory, he's arguing for just getting out there and encountering a lot of Chinese, watching the news on TV every morning and night until you understand its patterns e.g.

I'm not sure if I necessarily agree with him (my Chinese would be a lot better than it is if experience really counted that much), but it's an interesting way of looking at the problem, and OCR seems like it would be extremely helpful if you wanted to try that approach to studying written Chinese - commit to reading an entire novel cover-to-cover, say, even if that sort of thing is a bit above your current skill level, and hopefully, by the time you're done with it, even if you can't recall every word, your intuitive understanding of how to read a novel in Chinese will have improved and you'll have picked up a lot of common / useful vocabulary along the way just by seeing it a lot.

Definitely not just a "gimmick," anyway - we spent way too much money and time on OCR to be content with making a few quick bucks, we fully hope / intend for it to remain one of our signature features for years to come.