When it comes to learning Chinese or communicating with native Chinese speakers, having a reliable dictionary app at your disposal can be incredibly helpful. With the wide range of Android apps available for this purpose, finding the best one can be a daunting task. A good Chinese dictionary app should provide accurate and comprehensive translations, as well as useful features such as audio pronunciations, search history, and the ability to save favorite words for quick reference. In this article, we will review some of the top Android apps for Chinese dictionaries and highlight their key features to help you make an informed choice.
We have compiled a list of 6 Best Android App For Chinese Dictionary for your consideration, which have undergone rigorous testing and evaluation by our team of experts.
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6 Best Android App For Chinese Dictionary
1. Hanping Chinese Dictionary Lite 汉英词典
As of June 2020, the free version of Hanping Chinese Dictionary has reached one million downloads. The app allows users to look up Mandarin Chinese words offline using English, Pinyin, or Chinese characters. The app features Chinese handwriting recognition, Hanzi stroke animations, audio pronunciation by a native speaker, homescreen widgets, and a soundboard for practising all single-syllable sounds. Users can also access over 5,000 example sentences covering over 5,000 different words with word lists for HSK Exam, YCT Exam, Idioms, and more.
For Cantonese learners, Hanping Cantonese Dictionary offers a separate app. Other features of Hanping Chinese Dictionary include Pinyin or Zhuyin (Bopomofo) pronunciation, simplified and traditional characters, clipboard monitoring notifications, one-tap translation of sentences if the Google Translate app is installed, voice recognition, and quick display of words in Skritter, Google Translate, and more. Users can also import/export vocabulary to/from text files in a variety of formats and toggle clipboard monitoring on/off with the Quick Settings Tile.
2. Pleco Chinese Dictionary
Pleco is a mobile app designed to help users learn Chinese with the use of a Chinese-English dictionary, document reader, and flashcard system. It comes with two free dictionaries, CC-CEDICT and PLC, covering 130,000 Chinese words with 20,000 example sentences using Pinyin. Users can download eight more dictionaries for free, including Cantonese-English, and 19 others can be paid for.
The app offers a handwriting input feature where users can draw unknown Chinese characters, which can be recognized with its best-in-class recognition engine. There is also a live Optical Character Recognizer (OCR) feature that allows users to point their device’s camera at Chinese characters to look them up or scroll around a still image. The app is also equipped with a Screen Reader/OCR feature that instantly taps-lookup Chinese words in other apps through a floating interface.
Users can create flashcards from any dictionary entry, import premade word lists, use advanced techniques like SRS, and study in a variety of modes including fill-in-the-blanks and tone drills. The app also has an audio pronunciation feature where users can instantly hear male and female native-speaker audio for Chinese dictionary headwords.
Pleco offers excellent customer support through email and has an active user community. It has been in the market since 2000 and has been growing steadily for 17 years across four different platforms with no ads.
3. Chinese Learner’s Dictionary
This app is an English-Chinese and Chinese-English dictionary that contains over 500,000 high-quality word entries, along with HSK 1-6 and TOCFL vocabulary, and a database of over 9,000 Chinese Hanzi characters. It is designed to be an effective companion tool for learning Chinese with unique features and content.
One of the app’s strengths is its powerful search function, which allows users to look up words by English, Chinese characters, Pinyin (Number and Tone Mark), or a combination. It supports wildcards and full-text search for both Chinese and English, and can show results in a duo-list format.
Other features include Chinese synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and heteronyms, as well as English resemblant words. The app also has a quick cross-referencing function, where users can tap on any character or word in a dictionary entry to see relevant words and their definitions.
For those learning to write Chinese characters, the app includes stroke order diagrams that show how to draw/write each character in the correct order, and also supports radical search and illustrates how each character is composed by semantic or phonetic components.
The app also has audio pronunciation for both Chinese and English words, and users can look up words quickly by speaking them using voice recognition. There is also a useful and unique online mode that allows users to get word definitions quickly from well-known and dependable dictionaries with high-quality audio and example sentences.
4. LINE dictionary: Chinese-Eng
LINE Dictionary is a free Chinese-English dictionary that offers fast and easy offline search for brief definitions, as well as online search for detailed definitions. This tool operates both online and offline, allowing users to access it anytime and anywhere.
The dictionary contains the Collins Chinese-English and English-Chinese dictionary, with support for offline main definitions. It also boasts the broadest Chinese dictionary, with approximately 3,000,000 headwords. Additional functions include a Chinese sentence analyzer, handwriting input support, auxiliary dictionary word cards, and stroke order demonstrations, which provide a convenient learning environment for Chinese language learners.
Line Dictionary not only provides the pronunciation for words and sentences but also the dialogue, quote, and proverb of the day, making it an all-in-one private Chinese instructor. However, it is important to note that Line Dictionary only supports simplified Chinese.
This free online language study tool is available to anyone, anywhere, at any time with a mobile device. It is a great way to improve foreign language skills.
The required access permissions for Line Dictionary include the ability to save entry words and their short meanings that are shown in the auto-complete list.
5. Chinese best dictionary
This Chinese-English dictionary boasts the largest vocabulary and includes detailed word descriptions and numerous samples. Its simple user interface and high performance make it easy to use. The application offers full support for pronunciation in both English and Chinese, making it an invaluable tool for language learners. However, an internet connection is necessary for the pronunciation and web browser functions, although the application can run in offline mode. Users are advised to set up the Chinese keyboard before using the application.
This free dictionary is suitable for all Android devices, including mobile and tablet. Its offline capabilities make it useful for a wide range of people. Students, pupils, and researchers can benefit from the extensive vocabulary, which includes words from various fields such as medicine, mathematics, and biology. English learners can improve their grammar, idiolect, and lexicon through detailed examples and conjugation support. The dictionary can help improve skills in speaking, writing, reading, listening, and conversation, preparing users for tests like TOEFL and IELTS. Translators and interpreters can also benefit from this application, which provides quick translations and pronunciation for both languages with just one tap.
Finally, travelers who download this dictionary can communicate without difficulty in cities such as Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, and Chengdu. The application will prove invaluable in overcoming language barriers in China.
6. Oxford Chinese Dictionary
The Oxford Chinese Dictionary, developed in partnership with Foreign Language Teaching & Research Press (FLTRP), is a highly authoritative bilingual dictionary. It boasts an extensive collection of over 300,000 words, 370,000 translations, and tens of thousands of example phrases. The lexicographic methods used in producing the dictionary ensure accurate translations and practical information.
The layout of the entries is clear and easy to navigate. All Chinese words are organized by Pinyin and use simplified characters. Supplementary materials include grammar notes, example letters and emails, and guides to telephoning and text messaging. These features are ideal for students studying in China or those working in Chinese or English.
The dictionary provides a comprehensive guide on pronunciation, vowel length, and syllable stress. It also clearly indicates pre-reform spellings alongside the new preferred forms. The inclusion of cultural notes is another valuable feature that helps readers learn more about life in Chinese- and English-speaking countries. Additionally, the Tap to Translate feature allows users to translate words in any other Android app.
The dictionary includes several search tools to make the search experience more comprehensive. These tools include search autocomplete, keyword lookup, an automatic fuzzy filter to correct word spelling, and camera search. The voice search feature is especially useful for those who don’t know how an entry is spelled. Users can also easily share word definitions via installed apps on their device.
Learning tools are also available to help users enhance their vocabulary.