Essential Tools to help you Translate Scripts from Chinese!

[ShadowZeroHeart]

Since oni made a thread for Japanese, I shall make one for Chinese in retaliation!

http://www.nciku.com

Most recommended, lots of terms and phrases available, however it is in simplified chinese, remember to translate your traditional texts before using this site!!

http://translation.babylon.com/
http://en.bab.la/
http://translate.google.com/translate_t

These will help one translate or at least get most meanings of texts. I rely on them from time to time too!
Of course, there is nothing better than human translation helpers, so feel free to post any questions!

[Vaelis]

Two Chinese-English dictionaries:
http://www.mandarintools.com/worddict.html
http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

[ShadowZeroHeart]

http://dictionary.reverso.net/

Found one more, not sure how effective or useful tho...

[Zyzzyva165]

One more. dict.cn Just discovered it today. Hitherto, I'm quite happy with it.

[Mystes]

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

I highly recommend this one. It can seperate a long paragraph into words, and you don't need to search every word individually.

[Ariana]

Thank you. That certainly helps for people like me with low vocabulary. I have yet to try the sites linked but probably work as better dictionary than Google translate?

And for people like me who can understand the language they are translating from better when it's read to them:

http://e-guidedog.sourceforge.net/ekho.php

It doesn't sound too natural and is a bit monotonous, but I find its Cantonese to be understandable. Not sure about the Mandarin, though.

[MineRiko]

Here's what I do.

I paste the entire thing onto Google Translate, then I read the gist and type it out. Then if I find weird terms, I kinda get the meaning and type it in my own words.

Only applicable if you are rather good in Mandarin.

[pudding321]

Here's what I do.

I paste the entire thing onto Google Translate, then I read the gist and type it out. Then if I find weird terms, I kinda get the meaning and type it in my own words.

Only applicable if you are rather good in Mandarin.

This is quite discouraging.

[MineRiko]

I stopped soon after I posted that

[cloudii]

http://www.mdbg.net/chindict/chindict.php

I highly recommend this one. It can seperate a long paragraph into words, and you don't need to search every word individually.

For people who grew up with parents that only scream at you in Chinese (...even though you continue to respond in English)... xD -ahem-

Basically, if you're something like Chinese-American and have comfortable oral/verbal comprehension but can't read characters very well, a pinyin generator can speed up reading (and thus translating) a lot.

I once again, also recommend mdbg.net because it can do that too. xD Specifically, if you select "Inline/popup annotation" and "Look up all words in a text", you can paste a couple pages of text and it'll put pinyin over everything. And then when you mouse over, it goes dictionary-mode. <3



In order words, it makes translating vaguely possible for half-illiterate members like cloud... |D

EDIT:
Also saving this link because it's sometimes really nice to see plenty of examples for phrases you don't know: http://www.ichacha.net/
You know, boundless sentences. Examples of the word you look up in the dictionary. All those helpful things.

[Lord Lucifer]

I have no idea how this one compares to previously listed sources on here, but I've been using https://chinese.yabla.com/chinese-engli ... ionary.php to help me with my translations of Mismarca Koukou Monogatari, I literally found it by googling something about converting chinese characters to English. I've found it helpful because next to the possible meanings of the symbol, it has the pronunciation. It also will try to auto-match up symbols if they are used to form a single word / phrase, though I'm not 100% sure how effective it is at doing so.

[c933103]

Thank you. That certainly helps for people like me with low vocabulary. I have yet to try the sites linked but probably work as better dictionary than Google translate?

And for people like me who can understand the language they are translating from better when it's read to them:

http://e-guidedog.sourceforge.net/ekho.php

It doesn't sound too natural and is a bit monotonous, but I find its Cantonese to be understandable. Not sure about the Mandarin, though.

IMO, PRC's 讯飞语音 provide a better TTS service for both mandarin and cantonese but I could only find its android version, and its tone is a bit more close to those in mainland china.