While the iPhone hasn’t officially yet come to mainland China (to the glee of black marketeers) Apple’s shiny wonder brick is the modern traveler’s best friend. Beyond the conveniences of Skype, news and weather, here are some Sino-specific apps that have been helpful during our travels in China.
Qingwen Chinese Dictionary – This impressively large dictionary contains over 80,000 entries, ranging from “check please” (maidan) to “Stephanopolous” (“Sitefannuopuluosi”). Mr. Stephanopolous has yet to come up in conversation, but I like to be prepared. Qingwen has been utterly indispensable in our studies here. We downloaded it when it was free, but today at $4.99 the app is still a total steal. Many of the students at our school are using extremely similar dedicated electronic dictionaries that cost upwards of a hundred bucks that don’t do too much more than Qingwen. DianHua Dictionary is a good, free alternative. It’s not as slick as Qingwen but its search function does allow for mixing characters, Pinyin and English.
Currency – There are many currency converter apps out there that want to charge you 99 cents. This one is free, simpler and, therefore, better than all the rest. Enough said.
Lonley Planet Mandarin Phrasebook – There’s lots of phrasebooks scattered across the sprawling app store, but LP’s is the slickest one. With over 600 phrases, easy search and helpful categories, you can quickly find the phrase you’re looking for. Each phrase is written in English, Pinyin and simplified Mandarin characters and also includes an audio option where a native speaker says aloud the phrase. For getting around the country or ordering food it’s quite useful. World Nomads Mandarin Language Guide is a decent, free alternative.
Panda Words – Learning to correctly write Mandarin characters requires three things – practice, practice, practice. But to practice you’ve got to know what order to draw the strokes. Panda words has animated demonstrations of hundreds characters so you can see how it’s done. The app lets you practice write on the screen but if you don’t want your characters looking like they were drawn by a toddler using MS Paint, I recommend sticking with pen and paper.
Beijing Metro – For 99 cents, it’s worth having a complete map of Beijing’s sprawling, and growing, metro in your pocket. All the stations are labeled in Pinyin as well as Mandarin characters. It’s even got a built in taxi card generator, so if you need to get from the hotel to the nearest subway station you can just show your phone to the driver and he’ll be able to read where you want to go.
Please take a look at EZ-HAN 1.3. It is the most comprehensive Mandarin dictionary on the iPhone. It is more than just a bi-directional dictionary. It does Mandarin text translation analysis for students of all levels. Plus it instantly translates between Simplified and Traditional scripts (i.e. Mandarin and Cantonese). It has more than 105,000 Mandarin words and phrases with more than 500,000 English words and phrases. Users can search by characters, pinyin, homonyms, rhymes, etc. Please view the full tutorial at http://www.at-tariq.com. Go to the Products link and click on EZ-HAN.
Here is a summary blurb that also appears on that site:
EZ-HAN is a language acquisition and research tool for Mandarin. The basic version consists of a Chinese-English, English-Chinese dictionary and Chinese text analyzer for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. EZ-HAN is the most comprehensive Chinese-English dictionary available on the iPhone platform. Version 1.3 has been optimized for speed and readability. Look for the latest version on the iStore.
• Users can search for definitions, related words (synonyms), homonyms, rhymes and sample usages based upon English, Pinyin or Chinese characters.
• Users can also either type or cut and paste entire blocks of Chinese text (i.e. news articles, emails, ebooks, etc.) into a text view, and then select and highlight the Chinese text in order to perform a translation analysis of that text. Users can also simply tap on a button to instantly translate between simplified and traditional scripts. The text view also allows zooming in and out for easy readability.
• EZ-HAN has over 105,000 Mandarin words and phrases, (including technical terms) over 500,000 English words and phrases, and supports both simplified and traditional scripts.
EZ-HAN 是研究和无师自学普通话的软件工具。这个应用程序包括汉英－英汉字典和分析汉语课文的工具。EZ-HAN字典的基本版本包含 105,000 多普通话的文字和短语丶 500,000 多英文单词和短语。除此之外有一个分析汉语课文的视图。基本版本是正在发展的豪华版本的基础。当你在看 http://www.at-tariq.com 的时候请点击Products链接以了解教程。
Please… Is there a EZ-HAN version for PC? Thank you.
A very useful application when you are visiting China is Taxi-book. It is basically a digital database filled with up to date addresses to places that are visited by foreigners. It has a function of showing the address you are going to in Chinese and also has a voice feature that lets the driver listen to the address if he is unable to read! Very practical tool!