Freeware Chinese Translators

If you've ever been labelled a banana, you'll know how embarassing that can be. Yes, you speak English, and English is the lingua franca for world trade. Yet the calls of culture and language beckons always. Being able to converse in Mandarin means that new doors are opened up.

A friend recently gave me a copy of Dimsum 0.7.8, which annotates entire pages of Mandarin text and can give pop-up definitions. It's freeware. I tried using it but it has tended to freeze on me, forcing me to shut it down by force. Click on the following links to download:

JAR File (JAVA based)
Windows Installer

I've also found certain other online tools very useful.

Rikai is able to convert Big5 text into GB format. Also, it has pop-up definitions for both webpages you choose and for daily Chinese news.

Rikai

AdsoTrans is also very useful. It provides pop up definitions for Chinese language web pages you define. But that's just one of the services it's got. There's many other useful bits.

AdsoTrans
Chinese News in English
Vocabulary builder

Well, regardless of that, Taiwan and Hong Kong still use Traditional Chinese writing systems (Big5 font). The following website will also provide pop-up definitions for Big5 fonts. But more notably it can create a separate list for further study. ^_^

Chinese Big5 Annotator

Do enjoy your Chinese.